Your Heritage dictionary obviously doesn't include ye olde englishe colloquial engineering terms. The cronkshift agitator sprocket was to be found on ye olde mechanical yarn spinning engines, mostly used in the north of England back in 1700andfrozentodeath. Between the warp and the weft of the yarn spinning suzies was a sprocket that rotated the wool in an anti-clockwise direction (In countries on the southern half of the planet it goes clockwise) by way of the re-gimping collector gear attached to the sliding pully jack. Every 3/4 turn of the sprocket resulted in a one foot length of wool being shifted along the peter-bar which was then spun onto the material being woven. This was often in conjunction with another medium such as cotton...hence the expression 'cottoned-on'. The cronkshift - a reversing mechanism - was moved by the actions of the agitator sprocket. This allowed the whole process to be repeated eternally until the end of the weaving run, the moment the required length of cloth had finshed being created. Thus the failure of the cronkshift agitator sprocket was a very serious thing, amounting to the complete shut-down of the machine and the weaving run, costing the owner loads of money and often the sacking (the covering of the machine supervisor in the discarded and worthless length of cloth)of whoever was on duty at the time. The Bryster

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All the Woes of a World by Jonathan Icknield aka The Bryster

And in my final hours - I would cling rather to the tattooed hand of kindness - than the unblemished hand of hate...