[1] : The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48

crunch \crunch\, v. t.
   to crush with the teeth; to chew with a grinding noise; to
   craunch; as, to crunch a biscuit.
   1913 webster crunk

[2] : The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48

crunch \crunch\ kru^nch, v. i. imp.  p. p. crunched
   kru^ncht; p. pr.  vb. n. crunching. prob. of
   imitative origin; or cf. d. schransen to eat heartily, or e.
   scrunch.
   1. to chew with force and noise; to craunch.
      1913 webster

            and their white tusks crunched o'er the whiter
            skull.                                --byron.
      1913 webster

   2. to grind or press with violence and noise.
      1913 webster

            the ship crunched through the ice.    --kane.
      1913 webster

   3. to emit a grinding or craunching noise.
      1913 webster

            the crunching and ratting of the loose stones. --h.
                                                  james.
      1913 webster
see also:
crunched crunching 

[3] : WordNet (r) 2.0

crunch
     n 1: the sound of something crunching; "he heard the crunch of
          footsteps on the gravel path"
     2: a critical situation that arises because of a shortage as a
        shortage of time or money or resources; "an end-of-the
        year crunch"; "a financial crunch"
     3: the act of crushing syn: crush, compaction
     v 1: make crunching noises; "his shoes were crunching on the
          gravel" syn: scranch, scraunch, crackle
     2: press or grind with a crunching noise syn: cranch, craunch,
         grind
     3: chew noisily; "the children crunched the celery sticks"
        syn: munch
     4: reduce to small pieces or particles by pounding or abrading;
        "grind the spices in a mortar"; "mash the garlic" syn: grind,
         mash, bray, comminute
see also:
crush compaction scranch scraunch crackle cranch 
craunch grind munch mash bray 
comminute 

[4] : Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0

186 moby thesaurus words for "crunch":
   appulse, atomize, bang, bang into, belch, bind, bite, blare, blat,
   bray, break into pieces, break to pieces, break up, brunt,
   bulldozing, bulling, bump, bump into, burr, buzz, cackle, cannon,
   carambole, carom, carom into, caw, champ, chaw, chew, chirr, chomp,
   chump, clang, clangor, clank, clash, climacteric, clutch, collide,
   collision, come into collision, complication, concuss, concussion,
   confront each other, convergence of events, crack up, crack-up,
   crash, crash into, craunch, crisis, critical juncture,
   critical moment, critical point, croak, crossroads, crucial period,
   crump, crush, crux, cut to pieces, dash into, demolish, diffuse,
   disperse, disrupt, embarrassing position, embarrassment, emergency,
   encounter, exigency, extremity, fall foul of, fine how-do-you-do,
   fission, foul, fragment, grate, grind, groan, growl, grumble,
   hammering, hell to pay, high pressure, hinge, hit, hit against,
   hobble, hot water, how-do-you-do, hurt, hurtle, imbroglio, impact,
   imperativeness, impinge, impingement, jam, jangle, jar, juncture,
   knock, knock against, make mincemeat of, masticate, mauling, meet,
   meeting, mess, mince, mix, moment of truth, morass, munch,
   onslaught, parlous straits, pass, percuss, percussion, pickle,
   pinch, plight, predicament, press, pressure, pretty pass,
   pretty pickle, pretty predicament, pulverize, push, quagmire,
   quicksand, ramming, rasp, repercussion, rub, ruminate, run into,
   scatter, scranch, scrape, scratch, scrunch, shatter, shiver, shock,
   showdown, sideswipe, slam into, sledgehammering, slough,
   smack into, smash, smash into, smash up, smash-up, smashing, snarl,
   snore, splinter, spot, squash, squeeze, squish, stew,
   sticky wicket, strait, straits, stress, strike, strike against,
   swamp, tension, thrusting, tight spot, tight squeeze, tightrope,
   tricky spot, turn, turning point, twang, unholy mess, urgency,
   whomp

[5] : Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001)

crunch 1. vi. 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. vt. to reduce the size of a file by a
   complicated scheme that produces bit configurations completely unrelated
   to the original data, such as by a huffman code. the file ends up
   looking something like a paper document would if somebody crunched the
   paper into a wad. since such compression usually takes more
   computations than simpler methods such as run-length encoding, the term
   is doubly appropriate. this meaning is usually used in the construction
   `file crunching' to distinguish it from number-crunching. see
   compress. 3. n. the character `'. used at xerox and cmu, among other
   places. see ascii. 4. vt. to squeeze program source into a
   minimum-size representation that will still compile or execute. the term
   came into being specifically for a famous program on the bbc micro that
   crunched basic source in order to make it run more quickly it was a
   wholly interpretive basic, so the number of characters mattered.
   obfuscated c contest entries are often crunched; see the first example
   under that entry.


see also:
number-crunching compress ascii obfuscated c contest 

[6] : The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03)

crunch
     
        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 complicated scheme that produces bit
        configurations completely unrelated to the original data, such
        as by a huffman code.  since such compression usually
        takes more computations than simpler methods such as
        run-length encoding, the term is doubly appropriate.  this
        meaning is usually used in the construction "file crunching"
        to distinguish it from number crunching.  use of crunch
        itself in this sense is rare among unix hackers.
     
        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
     
        2002-03-14
     
     
see also:
number crunching huffman compression run-length encoding number crunching crunch 
unix hash character xerox cmu bbc microcomputer 
bbc basic source keywords obfuscated c contest jargon file 

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