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What does the phrase in capital letters means in this context?

Stress is a survival mechanism. When danger appears, it can get you out of trouble quickly. Your body CRASHES UP THE GEARS and throws all its resources into getting you moving.

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    When a car accelerates, you change up through the gears as you pick up speed. Crashing or grinding your gears is when you miss time the clutch and they make that horribly crunching noise, something that often happens when you are trying to change gear quickly. So crashes up the gears is implying that your body is rushing to get moving as fast as possibly. The feeling you get from the sudden rush of adrenalin is akin to the noise of the gears changing.
    – JonLarby
    Mar 8, 2018 at 13:53
  • It's not a common idiom in the US, and might be interpreted several different ways, absent sufficient context. (Especially given that no one knows how to use a clutch anymore.)
    – Hot Licks
    Mar 8, 2018 at 13:56
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    You are asking two questions 1) What kind of expression is this ? and 2) What does the expression mean ? It is a simile or metaphor and it is a hyperbole, in my opinion. It means that the body produces adrenalin in times of stress which triggers rapid responses in organs in order to meet the danger/opportunity.
    – Nigel J
    Mar 8, 2018 at 13:56
  • Answered, but @NigelJ's explanation is good. Mar 8, 2018 at 14:32
  • @HotLicks - Sorry, I forgot you guys don't really use "stick shifts" any more. In the UK 80% of cars are still manual.
    – JonLarby
    Mar 8, 2018 at 15:10

2 Answers 2

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in the states: get a move on TFD

to move, proceed, or work faster; to hurry

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It’s (probably) originally a malapropism for CRANKS up the gear(s). A quick search online for "crank up the gears" finds a lot of quite literal uses mostly related to cycling and motor racing.

The crank1 stems from the action to start a car engine running, many many years ago before starter motors.

Then crank up (see previous reference) came to mean to increase or improve the amount of something or its performance.

Crank up the gears is metaphorical usage, referring to putting a vehicle into its top gear, although the example you cite would be more accurately, er, metaphored as stoking the boiler or stirring up the fire(s)

Amusingly, Cambridge marks crank up [something] 2 as American English ...


1 Oxford Living Dictionaries

2 Cambridge Dictionaries

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