Crank Call vs. Prank Call

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Storm calling from San Antonio, Texas.

Hi, Storm. Welcome.

What can we do for you?

Well, we need an expert in opinion on a debate we’re having in my family.

My son and I were having a discussion, and he used the term prank call.

So I corrected him saying, no, no, no, dear, you commit a prank,

But if you want to prank someone using the phone, that’s a crank call.

So my son, who is almost 15, looked at me like I was crazy and said, Mom, that’s not even a word, meaning a phrase.

So I Googled crank call and then swaggered over to him to show that crank call is indeed a term.

But I was shocked to find that crank call was the less common version and that it had somewhat of a more negative connotation than prank call.

I checked with my parents who are in their late 60s, and they’ve heard of both terms but state that a crank call is different.

And my mother used the word insidious and dangerous.

Ooh.

Nice.

And in asking friends, I find there’s a mix of crank versus prank.

Some say crank call is a more old-fashioned term.

And I was wondering if you could weigh in on this and let us know a little bit more about the derivation.

I don’t find that there are real regional differences with my friends that I’ve asked.

Is it a generational thing?

When did crank become bad?

You’ve done such fine work there so far.

Yeah, you’ve done your homework, Storm.

You’ve come very close to the end on this.

A couple things here.

Obviously, the rhyming of the two words, prank and crank, has to have something to do with the confusion.

So let’s just acknowledge that I could easily see somebody confusing them.

But they are different words and they have different histories and they do mean different things.

And if you wanted to be specific, you might choose one word over another.

For example, a crank call.

Was it your mother or your mother-in-law?

My mother.

Your mother, yeah.

I think she’s right.

A crank call tends to be the heavy breather or the one who says, you know, offensive things

Or the people who call you and then hang up and they do it repeatedly

Or the ones who say mean gossip about you or your neighbors on the phone.

And their goal is to make themselves feel superior,

But they’re not trying to get a laugh, really.

They’re not trying to just do a joke.

It’s not the is-your-refrigerator-running style of call.

So it is insidious and dangerous.

Was it insidious and dangerous? Is that what she said?

Yes, those were some of the terms she used.

And I think of my harmless crank calls from when I was young,

And, you know, I had no idea I was referring to something so dangerous or that I was doing something.

But there’s definitely some overlap where people have just used crank call to mean prank call.

And a prank call is a prank.

You’re doing it as a goof, a laugh to make you or your friends giggle or you’re trying out these old favorites.

Or a prank call, you know, I think of the Jerky Boys when I was coming up in the world.

Do you guys remember these?

Google it.

So they did classic prank calls where the whole thing is just to put on and they do voices and set up these weird scenarios and these poor operators or whoever they talk to just fall for it again and again and again.

More of like the morning show style of call, you know, where they call the wife’s husband at work with some meetup story and she’s giggling on the line.

That’s a prank call, right?

So was there a particular time that crank became bad?

I mean, was this, did this happen around the time, like, when methamphetamines were, like, they referred to as crank?

No, those are separate.

Or when the term crunk came along, you know, sort of having a good time or getting drunk?

Those are all etymologically distinct, very different from each other and their origins.

Crank is a negative thing.

It goes back way before even the telephone.

Right.

I know a person can be cranky or can be a crank.

Crank as in someone who sends you these insidious and evil email or postal mails.

We have crank letters in print.

The word crank letters, the phrase crank letters from the 1800s where people talk about receiving crank letters.

There’s one story I read of an editor at a newspaper talking about how he divides his mail into four stacks.

The bills to pay, the letters to the editor, the letters some people would want to cancel a subscription.

And then the fourth one is the crank letters.

And these are the ones who suggest plots of the government or who suggest that the newspaper is in bed with the local politicians or that sort of thing.

Yeah. And you think of a crank as a person, a particular kind of person like, oh, he’s a crank.

But you don’t say, oh, he’s a prank. Right.

And so so that crank as in the person who’s got some ulterior motives and they’re they’re out to they’re out to make a point and not get a laugh does come from cranky, though, meaning ill tempered or foul tempered.

And that, in turn, comes from Dutch and German, the words krank, which means sick.

So imagine how you’d act if you were sick.

You’d be really hard to please and to get angry at a moment’s notice.

So it sounds like what you’re saying is that krank is more insidious than a simple krank.

And has been for a very long time.

Well, I had no idea, and I won’t refer to the harmless calls of my youth as krank calls anymore,

Let anyone think I was up to something nefarious.

Well, thank you so much for weighing in on this debate.

This has been enlightening and a lot of fun.

Your show is one of the few radio shows my children and I enjoy listening to together.

Thank you very much.

Fantastic.

Thanks for calling.

All right.

Thanks a lot.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

We do occasionally get prank or crank calls on the toll-free line, but don’t do that.

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