In Breaking Bad, when Walter White switches to using a methylamine-based formula for producing methamphetamine, DEA agent Hank Schrader describes it as “old-school biker meth.” I don’t know whether or not that’s true! I don’t know anything about methamphetamine, or bikers, or old schools!
But the Breaking Bad wiki (fandom.com link, sorry) also says…
From the 1960s to the mid-1980s, reductive amination was the method of choice for clandestine methamphetamine production. Enterprising biker gangs who dominated the trade at this time mostly ran these operations. (The slang term “crank” for methamphetamine allegedly originated from bikers transporting meth in the crankshafts of their bikes.)
Which I thought was pretty cool! I started typing out a message on Discord to the friend who got me started on Breaking Bad and who also puts up with a lot of my etymology bullshit. And then, after a moment, I thought:
Wait a minute.
To head one possible objection off at the pass: no, this absolutely isn’t something that the writers of Breaking Bad invented. I mean, maybe the biker thing is, but that etymology of “crank” isn’t (it isn’t even mentioned). You can find it all over the Internet, and in books that well predate the show. But, of course, that doesn’t mean that it’s true.
And so here, in this hollow valley, this broken jaw of our lost kingdoms, this moment where Sandy truly becomes Writing Dog, I figured we could take some time to evaluate this claim. And, more specifically, to take a look back at the Dog Etymology Cuteness Razor I introduced back in March. There, I posted a few criteria you could use to determine how skeptical you should be about the putative origin of a word.
So, let’s take it one step at a time!
- Is it an acronym?
No. Okay, well, that was easy!
- Is it racist? (sexist, etc…)
Also… no? Which is a little interesting, because you can so easily imagine ways in which it might be. Like, for example, it could’ve been tied to the sense of “crank” as a mentally ill person, right? That just wouldn’t have been as narratively interesting.
- Is it surprising in a way that most people would care about?
I think so! I mean, it’s got motorcycle gangs in it, and the evocative Hunter S Thompson-esque imagery of badass bikers, probably doing some wicked daredevil shit as they try to evade pursuers.
It’s not what you would expect, to be sure. I guarantee you that if you asked 10 people where “crank” comes from, none of them would get to this one.
Plus, it’s short and punchy. Even if you don’t know what a crankcase is, you know it’s part of an engine, and probably sealed, and you can imagine people stashing things there. It doesn’t require a lengthy explanation about motorcycle culture. You get the entire story in one sentence—two, if you throw in the idea of “old-school biker meth.”
So, there’s a reason we should keep our ears perked for any further complications—because it’s a word origin that is designed to be memetically interesting. That doesn’t mean it’s not true, though—so let’s keep going.
- Is it surprising because it’s not the obvious meaning of the word?
You know what? Put a pin in that one.
- Is it said to originate with a highly geographically specific and/or non-mainstream subculture?
Uh-oh.
This is definitely our biggest red flag, for two reasons. One: we need to consider the likelihood that someone would have gotten this information straight from the source. Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels does mention drug use amongst his time with the gang, but it mostly discusses acid, and briefly pot. It’s not like there were going to be a lot of embedded reporters asking “why, do you call this drug ‘crank,’ anyway?”—at least, not in my opinion.
Two, we’re also specifically talking about drugs, which means the source seems likely to be a cop telling a school assembly or (well, more likely) a group of reporters at a press conference about the street names for drugs, and throwing in a bit of color. Of course, mind you, it’s certainly possible that a motorcycle gangster, under interrogation, gave both the name and its etymology. Or, perhaps, said “I dunno, but I heard that…” and it entered the lore that way.
Either way, the OED attests the term “crank” as far back as 1969; it is definitely somewhat older, although maybe not much. Either way, it’s definitely before the AMA era. So, I think we have justifiable reason to be slightly cautious. Anyway,
- Is it overcomplicated and/or pretentious?
Nah. Not really, in my opinion. It doesn’t involve any contractions of foreign languages or anything like that. It’s a fairly simple explanation. But, like… is it the simplest? Okay, back to that pin:
- Is it surprising because it’s not the obvious meaning of the word?
Well, turn that one around for a second. That is: does this meaning of the word make sense? I mean, take a step back and think about the logistics of this. A crankcase is the part of the engine in which a crankshaft turns. Wikipedia has a couple of animated gifs here. I can’t imagine that there would be a whole lot of room in your average crankcase for significant quantities of methamphetamine.
For that matter, I can’t imagine it would be very good for either your bike or the meth. The Internet does not seem especially concerned with what the ideal crankcase temperature is, but engine oil can get troublingly close to 100°C. I don’t know what storage temperatures methamphetamine enjoys; the notes for desoxyn (prescription methamphetamine) say to keep it at room temperature, which seems reasonable. I’m sure degraded meth is better than no meth at all, but surely there have to be better places to store it on your Hog, right?
Anyway. I don’t think any of this is probably all that surprising, but the answer is “of course it’s not the obvious meaning of the word.” There are two other, more plausible origins. For one, it could be formed with relationship to the “cr” in “crystal.”
But also, you know, there is the other sense of “crank,” as in the sense of starting a car engine (attested as far back as the early 20th century), and by extension making something more intense or energetic (i.e., “crank up the volume”) which was common slang from the 1950s on.
We could even speculate that the latter sense is reinforced by the equally common “crystal” being applied, jocularly, by analogy to a crystal radio. That is speculation; concretely, as early as 1970 we have the Edmonton Journal providing a helpful list of drug slang, which, alongside:
Hooked — addicted to drugs
and
(to) groove — 1. to enjoy something, 2. to be lost in pleasant thoughts
includes:
(to) crank up — to inject a needle
Their term for methamphetamine is “crystals,” or generically “ups, uppers” (which does raise the question of whether the “up” in “shooting up” or “cranking up” is a preposition or a noun; I suspect the former). Six months later, on January 28th, 1971, the Kingston Whig-Standard in Ontario reports on various drug problems in the province, and says that:
Mr. Miller focused too on amphetamines, which he said are medically approved in our country but “totally banned” in Sweden. Some “speed freaks” are “shooting” or “cranking” up to 15,000 milligrams a day into their veins.
Two years earlier, the Redwood City Tribune (“‘Narcs, Fuzz’ In the Park,” June 14th) relates as an anecdote:
We needed $5 for a “nickle bag” [sic] of “crank,” an illegally manufactured version of methedrine or “speed.” It is usually bought in “time bags” ($10).
“Got any spare change?” we’d say to people, “We’re trying to get up a tank of gas to get us to Reno.
After we had collected $4.20, my friend approached the kid who had the “crank.” He had been walking around watching our panhandling progress.
The selling party was a fast-witted kid in his late teens.
”We’re 80 cents short,” my friend explained, “and we panhandled everybody in the park.”
The seller pulled a plastic vial from his jacket. There were a few pills and two “dime bags” of “crank” in it.
Carefully, he opened one of the small packets of “crank.” Almost surgically, he flicked open a stiletto and scraped what I”m sure was exactly $4.20 worth of the powdered drug onto a small piece of paper.
Later, they go on to say that “intravenous injection of ‘crank’ is said to give more of a ‘flash’ effect than oral injection of the drug.” Anyway, first off, hey, it’s the weed number! Second, though, it’s charming how they insist on putting slang in quotation marks every time it is used. Thirdly, it’s kinda wild how much of the slang is still being used.
Fourthly, there is that interesting note that “crank” is specifically an illegally manufactured version of speed, which might point us to the biker gangs. I think this might be a red herring, though; I suspect the intent is to distinguish it from legally available stimulants, which were still being used by respectable people at the time.
(Presumably, the kind of people who put “dime bag” in quotes every time they have to type it out)
Finally, on January 3rd, 1971 the Tacoma News-Tribune includes another anecdote, which makes this all explicit:
Friends, who had been smoking pot longer than I, had already graduated to the deadly methamphetamine crystals known as “speed” or “crank.” Crank, so-called because it seems to crank up the human nervous system to an almost unbearable point of tension, produces a psuedo-sharpness [sic] of wit and glibness of tongue along with a very sharp awareness for the first time it is used.
The earliest mention I can find of the “crankcase” story comes from February 22nd, 1985, and a UPI story: “Bandidos themselves often refer to methamphetamine as ‘crank,’ derived from the practice of storing the contraband in the crank cases of their motorcycles.” Being a UPI story, it was widely circulated, and whatever wag made that up is, I assume, largely responsible for inserting the story into the public consciousness.
Putting the pieces together, the Cuteness Razor tells us we should be skeptical of the “crankcase” story, and indeed the evidence is strongly against it. One is, moreover, left with the suspicion that the slang itself might be Canadian in origin? Perhaps they were simply more on the ball, since the term appears intermittently in the public record as early as 1965.
None of this should, I imagine, be too surprising. You knew as soon as you started reading this that I was going to tell you that “crank” does not, in fact, come from where the Breaking Bad fan wiki alleges.
But I wrote this because I think it’s a good example of how to apply a few basic principles to etymology. “Did you know ‘crank’ comes from motorcycle gangs storing crystal meth in the crankcase of their motorcycles?” is a story that sounds initially plausible and then, the moment you think about it even a little bit, tears itself to pieces like a “dime bag” in the engine of a “biker’s” “chopper.”
Honestly, they’re mostly like this, I promise :P
