crunch

[kruhnch] /krʌntʃ/
verb (used with object)
1.
to crush with the teeth; chew with a crushing noise.
2.
to crush or grind noisily.
3.
to tighten or squeeze financially:
The administration's policy seems to crunch the economy in order to combat inflation.
verb (used without object)
4.
to chew with a crushing sound.
5.
to produce, or proceed with, a crushing noise.
noun
6.
an act or sound of crunching.
7.
a shortage or reduction of something needed or wanted:
the energy crunch.
8.
distress or depressed conditions due to such a shortage or reduction:
a budget crunch.
9.
a critical or dangerous situation:
When the crunch comes, just do your best.
Idioms
10.
crunch numbers, Computers.
  1. to perform a great many numerical calculations or extensive manipulations of numerical data.
  2. to process a large amount of data.
Also, craunch.
Origin
1795-1805; blend of craunch and crush
Related forms
crunchable, adjective
Examples from the web for crunch
  • In these lean times fewer cows conceive, and fewer calves survive the crucial crunch of summer before the deadening of winter.
  • Pods are tasty in stir fries, and they add crunch to salads.
  • More jam flavors the buttercream frosting, and sliced almonds add crunch.
  • Store-bought meringue cookies add crunch, while pistachios lace the layers with nutty sweetness.
  • The sprouts give a touch of crunch and sweetness, the basil depth.
  • Sweet and juicy mango mirrors the flavor of perfectly cooked shrimp, while toasted coconut adds crunch.
  • Hazelnuts and cornmeal give these pancakes a nutty crunch and help them stick with you throughout the day.
  • Caraway seeds are a great match for potatoes, adding lively flavor and crunch.
  • Its crisp apple still has crunch to it, yet there's caramel from a little aging too.
  • crunch went the snow as he crossed the soccer field.
British Dictionary definitions for crunch

crunch

/krʌntʃ/
verb
1.
to bite or chew (crisp foods) with a crushing or crackling sound
2.
to make or cause to make a crisp or brittle sound: the snow crunched beneath his feet
noun
3.
the sound or act of crunching
4.
short for abdominal crunch
5.
(informal) the crunch, the critical moment or situation
adjective
6.
(informal) critical; decisive: crunch time
Also called craunch
Derived Forms
crunchable, adjective
crunchy, adjective
crunchily, adverb
crunchiness, noun
Word Origin
C19: changed (through influence of munch) from earlier craunch, of imitative origin
Word Origin and History for crunch
v.

1814, from craunch (1630s), probably of imitative origin. Related: Crunched; crunching. The noun is 1836, from the verb; the sense of "critical moment" was popularized 1939 by Winston Churchill, who had used it in his 1938 biography of Marlborough.

Slang definitions & phrases for crunch

crunch

modifier

: : It's Crunch Time in the Havens

noun
  1. A crisis; a desperate climax; squeeze: Then came the political conventions that summer, and more crunches/ A ''crunch'' is characterized by a skyrocketing of interest rates and a choking off of the availability of credit/ The ''crunch'' between press and Government is inevitable in American affairs (1930s+)
  2. Akindof exercise for the stomach, in which one pulls the head off the floor while lying on one's back: Actress Julianne Phillips keeps her stomach flat by doing 6,000 ''crunches'' a week (1990s+)
verb
  1. To process, usually in a wearisome way (1980s+ Computer)
  2. To study intensely; pull an all-nighter (1980s+ Students)

crunch in Technology

1. To process, usually in a time-consuming or complicated way. Connotes an essentially trivial operation that is nonetheless painful to perform. The pain may be due to the triviality's being embedded in a loop from 1 to 1,000,000,000. "Fortran programs do mostly number crunching."
2. To reduce the size of a file without losing information by a scheme such as Huffman coding. Since such lossless compression usually takes more computations than simpler methods such as run-length encoding, the term is doubly appropriate.
3. The hash character. Used at XEROX and CMU, among other places.
4. To squeeze program source to the minimum size that will still compile or execute. The term came from a BBC Microcomputer program that crunched BBC BASIC source in order to make it run more quickly (apart from storing keywords as byte codes, the language was wholly interpreted, so the number of characters mattered). Obfuscated C Contest entries are often crunched; see the first example under that entry.
[Jargon File]
(2007-11-12)