Darle Cran

There's a curious expression in Spanish, "darle cran." I don't know if it exists outside of Mexico. You usually use it to mean doing away with something, destroying it, killing it. My dad told me the other day that the expression originally meant to crank...it comes from cranking a car motor. Literally, then, "give it a crank."

So how did that end up meaning to get rid of something? My guess is that if something was "dead" or not working, you would say you had to "darle cran" to get it started (crank it up). Maybe eventually people thought it meant it was no good anymore and should be thrown away. And then from that it went to actually destroying it.