Also 6–7 cranck(e. [Of the same origin as prec., and possibly the same word, with the original sense ‘crooking, crook’; but the two words had been differentiated before the earliest instances of this.]
† 1. A crook, bend, winding, meandering; a winding or crooked path, course or channel. Obs.
1572. J. Jones, Bathes Buckstone, 12 a. Bowling in allayes … eyther in playne or longe allayes, or in suche as haue Cranckes with halfe bowles.
1580. North, Plutarch (1676), 7. How he might easily wind out of the turnings and cranks of the Labyrinth. Ibid., 846. Aratus … was out of his path he should have found … and with many crooks and cranks went to the foot of the Castle.
1596. Spenser, F. Q., VII. vii. 52. So many turning cranks these [the planets] have, so many crookes.
1600. Holland, Livy, XXII. xxxv. 413 a. [Anniball] woon the verie tops of the Alpes, through by-lanes and blind crankes.
1607. Shaks., Cor., I. i. 141. Through the Crankes and Offices of man.
1612. Two Noble K., I. ii. 28. Meet you no ruin but the soldier in The cranks and turns of Thebes?
c. 1630. Risdon, Surv. Devon (1810), 63. Exe … runneth a long course with his crooked cranks.
† b. fig. A crooked or deceitful way; a deceit, wile, sleight. Obs.
1588. J. Harvey, Disc. Probl., 69. To occupie … the commons … by flimflams, wily cranks, and sleightie knacks of the maker.
1614. D. Dyke, Myst. Selfe-Deceiving (1615), 16. A cunning cranke of deepe and devilish deceitfulnesse.
1643. Milton, Divorce, Introd. The waies of the Lord, strait and faithfull … not full of cranks and contradictions.
ǁ 2. A tortuous or somewhat inaccessible hole or crevice; a cranny. Obs. b. Sometimes used as = Chink, crevice, crack: but prob. by confusion with crack and cranny.
1562. J. Heywood, Prov. & Epigr. (1867), 217. Suche crankis, such cony holes.
1601. Holland, Pliny, II. 274. The root is giuen to haue cranks and holes, and those full of mud or durt.
1612. W. Parkes, Curtaine-Dr. (1876), 18. Exclude the light from the crankes and cranies of our chambers.
b. 1552. Huloet, Crannye or cranke in an earthen potte, ignea.
1861. Mrs. Norton, Lady La G., Prol. 47. There daylight peeps through many a crank.
c. fig.
1610. Healey, Vives’ Comm. St. Aug. Citie of God (1620), 74. There is no cranke, no secret, in all these tongues, but he hath searcht it out.
1627–77. Feltham, Resolves, i. 83 (T.). The politick heart is too full of cranks and angles for the discovery of a plain familiar.
3. A twist or fanciful turn of speech; a humorous turn, a verbal trick or conceit. Usually in phr. quips and cranks, after Milton. Also, anything fantastic in behavior, gesture or action.
1594. 2nd Rep. Faustus, in Thoms, Prose Rom. (1858), III. 338. Such cranks, such lifts, careers and gambalds, as he plaid there, would have made a horse laugh.
1632. Milton, L’Allegro, 25. Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles.
1755. Johnson, Crank … 3. Any conceit formed by twisting or changing, in any manner, the form or meaning of a word.
1805. Moore, To Lady H., v. To play at riddles, quips, and cranks.
1820. Shelley, Witch Atlas, li. 5. Many quips and cranks She played upon the water.
1873. Dixon, Two Queens, IV. XIX. vi. 37. Wolsey was driven to quips and cranks which made the King suspect him.
4. An eccentric notion or action; a mental twist put into practice; a crotchet, whim, caprice.
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev., XIII. vii. (Webster Suppl.). Subject to sudden cranks, a headlong, very positive, loud, dull and angry kind of man.
1848. Lytton, Harold, 130. These be new cranks, with a vengeance; we shall be choosing German or Saracen or Norman next.
1889. Pall Mall Gaz., 7 June, 6/1. The son … does not share what he probably deems the ‘crank’ of his sire.
5. U.S. colloq. A person with a mental twist; one who is apt to take up eccentric notions or impracticable projects; esp. one who is enthusiastically possessed by a particular crotchet or hobby; an eccentric, a monomaniac. [This is prob. a back-formation from CRANKY, sense 4.]
1881. Times, 22 Dec., 3/4. Guiteau continued:—‘You have got a lot of stuff there. It is not in your handwriting. I guess it must have been contributed by some crank.’
1882. Pall Mall Gaz., 14 Jan., 4/1. Persons whom the Americans since Guiteau’s trial have begun to designate as ‘cranks’—that is to say, persons of disordered mind, in whom the itch of notoriety supplies the lack of any higher ambition.
1889. W. Besant, in Longm. Mag., May, 28. It is the brightness of enthusiasm. Every crank has such eyes.
6. dial. [App. belongs chiefly to this word, with sense of ‘something wrong’ (cf. WRONG from wring to twist, F. tort:—L. tortus); but a physical comparison of pains or spasms to crank action is also possible.]
1847–78. in Halliwell.
1888. Berkshire Gloss., Cranks, aches and slight ailments. A person is said to be full of ‘crinks and cranks’ when generally complaining of ill-health.
