Hello and welcome to the English we speak, where we explain phrases used by fluent english speakers so that you can use them too.
I'm fei Fei and I'm here with Phil.
Hello.
How are you, fei fei?
You look tired.
Oh, that's a bit rude.
Although it is true I have a new neighbour.
Every time I try to go to sleep, my neighbour cranks up the volume of his music.
It's driving me crazy.
Oh, no.
But that does give us a phrasal verb to learn in this program, crank up.
It can mean turn up.
But can you tell us a bit more about it?
Yes.
So it might actually help if you think about an old machine.
A crank is a handle that you turn to make something happen.
When we use crank up, we mean to increase the intensity of something, like the volume on my neighbour's speakers.
And it's not just volume, it can be the intensity of anything.
We often use it metaphorically.
So you can talk about cranking up your efforts to do something.