crankshaft

nounC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,650 of 15,258mostly written

Other forms: crankshafts

A crankshaft is the shaft that turns up-and-down movement into spinning. A broken crankshaft, the crankshaft turns, crankshaft bearings.

It is the piece that makes an engine an engine: the pistons push down and the offset arms of the crankshaft convert that into rotation. The same principle is in the pedals of a bicycle.

Definitions of crankshaft

1nouncrankshaftThe shaft that turns up-and-down movement into spinning.C1
“The mechanic said the engine's crankshaft was broken and would be expensive to replace.”

crankshaft is a shaft.

Where it comes from

Crank plus shaft, from crank, an arm set at an angle to a shaft.

From crank + shaft.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Vehicles & Machines

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crankshaft in the wild

The crankshaft is a rotating shaft containing one or more crankpins, that are driven by the pistons via the connecting rods.
Crankshaft
Most modern crankshafts are located in the engine block.
Crankshaft
A V-twin engine, also called a V2 engine, is a two-cylinder piston engine where the cylinders are arranged in a V configuration and share a common crankshaft.
V-twin engine
A V6 engine is a six-cylinder piston engine where the cylinders and cylinder blocks share a common crankshaft and are arranged in a V configuration.
V6 engine
A straight-twin engine (also known as an inline-twin, vertical-twin, inline-2, or parallel-twin) is a two-cylinder piston engine whose cylinders are arranged in a line along a common crankshaft.
Straight-twin engine

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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