Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. mad, eccentric; thus crankish adj., somewhat mad or eccentric.

1616		W. Haughton English-Men For My Money F3: What a pox are you mad or drunke [...] and if you be so cranke, Ile call the Constable.
1751		Smollett Peregrine Pickle (1964) 392: She goes a little crank and humoursome, by being overstowed with Nantz and religion.
a.1790		C. Dibdin ‘A Drop of the Creature’ Collection of Songs II 46: Three lads though crazy grown and crank.
1821–5		‘Bill Truck’ Man o’ War’s Man (1843) 11: He’ll get as muddled, and crank, and pompously stupid, as a port-admiral.
1838		‘Alfred Crowquill’ Seymour’s Humourous Sketches (1866) 131: I’m precious krank with tacking.
1844		J.C. Neal Peter Ploddy and Other Oddities 125: If a man be crank and lack ballast, he is swamped by the prosperous gale.
1882		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 4 Mar. 11/2: Probably the most reckless of all the ‘crank’ correspondents who have hit upon Mr. Fox [etc].
1890		‘Doss Chiderdoss’ ‘Unexpected Places’ Sporting Times 8 Mar. 1/3: He appeared to be a brother of some crankish crowd or other.
1907		S.E. White Arizona Nights 134: I saw once in some crank physical culture periodical that a cowboy’s life was physically ill-balanced.
1912		A. Berkman Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (1926) 130: Dis ’ere is crank shop. Dey never put a mug ’ere ’cept he’s bugs.
1920		S. Lewis Main Street (1921) 200: My ‘crank ideas,’ he calls them.
1939		W. Winchell On Broadway 8 Apr. [synd. col.] The Fort Worth threats turned out to be ‘crank letters’.
1948		Daily Ardmoreite 21 Apr. 1/3: He gets a lot of crank letters and these I threw away [DA].
1968		K. Brasselle Cannibals 472: I glanced at the letter. It was a crank job.
1986		R. Campbell In La-La Land We Trust (1999) 91: We got crank calls pouring in, some from gazoonies threatening to blow his fucking head off for bending over.
1992		I. Rankin Strip Jack 167: Oh yes, letters. Crank letters.
2003		J. Ellroy ‘Stephanie’ in Destination: Morgue! (2004) 54: A crank note came in. It snitched off actor Richard Burton.

2. drunk.

1770		Gent.’s Mag. 559: To express the condition of an Honest Fellow, and no Flincher, under the Effects of good Fellowship, it is said that he is [...] Crank.
1830		N. Ames Mariner’s Sketches 50: She was apparently less ‘crank in the upper works’ then.
1851		Kalida Venture (OH) 11 Apr. 2/4: Drunk [...] crank.