Today internal combustion engines in cars, trucks, motorcycles, construction machinery and many others, most commonly use a four-stroke cycle. The four strokes refer to intake, compression, combustion and exhaust strokes that occur during two crankshaft rotations per working cycle of Otto Cycle and Diesel engines. The four steps in this cycle are often informally referred to as "suck, squeeze (or squash), bang, blow." For more details see the Wikipedia article here. Or Help expand this article by writing more.