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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
crunch
I.noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a credit crunch/squeeze (=a situation in which people are not allowed as much credit as before)
▪ Due to a credit squeeze, interest rates rose.
credit crunch
crunch/grind the gears (=change gear in a way that makes an unpleasant noise)
▪ He crunched the gears into reverse.
number crunching
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
cash
▪ Despite this cash crunch, Simpson may yet find a way to at least postpone payment of his debts to the plaintiffs.
▪ The cash crunch also prevented the family from fully stocking its remaining stores.
credit
▪ That would cause a severe credit crunch.
▪ A credit crunch is the name economists give to a sudden reluctance among banks to lend money.
▪ Typically, a credit crunch happens when banks start to worry about the creditworthiness of their borrowers.
▪ The consequences for severely indebted countries are dire: higher interest rates for many, and a credit crunch.
▪ This demand on the international capital markets raises interest rates, aggravating the problems of debt and credit crunch.
time
▪ Many families face a time crunch, but experts disagree on the extent to which average working hours have increased.
▪ Acknowledging the time crunch, Rep.
■ VERB
come
▪ I don't know if I want to marry him, or if I will whenever it comes to the crunch.
▪ When it comes to the crunch, you won't have time to start thinking about what to do next.
▪ If it comes to the crunch, going in would seem to me the lesser evil.
▪ And it came to the crunch in April, I was on a death wish.
▪ Now come the real crunch figures: the projected plan benefits at maturity.
▪ However, when it comes to the crunch you will probably find yourself writing round to agencies asking for an interview.
▪ And here we come to the crunch - the core of the paradox.
▪ Ramsay and Fraser reckoned that perhaps one-third might desert Dunbar when it came to the crunch.
hear
▪ She could almost hear the crunch they made.
▪ You jam your foot on the brie as you hear a horrible crunch from behind the car.
▪ Suddenly, from behind, I heard the crunch of rubble.
▪ He heard a crunch or two and saw the headlights where he knew there wasn't a road.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ At crunch time the team really pulled together.
▪ I heard the crunch of footsteps on gravel road outside.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Actually, the crunch did come, and the liberals never lifted a finger to save us.
▪ First though it's rugby and crunch time in the Courage League tomorrow.
▪ If it comes to the crunch, going in would seem to me the lesser evil.
▪ Millions of otherwise serviceable computers today are suffering from space crunch.
▪ My footsteps made a satisfactory crunch on a gravel path and I was aware at once that the satyr's footsteps had halted.
▪ There was the crunch of his feet rapidly moving away over the snow and she felt her tense muscles relax.
▪ While that supply crunch has eased, prices are still benefiting to some extent, traders say.
II.verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
gravel
▪ He allowed the car to move slowly forward, the tyres crunching against the gravel road.
▪ Steps crunched on the roadside gravel as some one came around to the back.
▪ It crunched round on the gravel in front of the house then sped off through the gates scattering white stones.
number
▪ Despite his off-course number crunching, he was, in the main, a feel player, not a technician.
▪ I can find Frieze invaluable for capturing graphical output from number crunching software.
numbers
▪ Linked together, they can crunch numbers as fast as any mainframe, but at a fraction of the cost.
▪ They crunch those numbers with their calculators and spreadsheets.
▪ Though they crunch the same numbers and speak to the same executives, the agencies' analysts have reached markedly different conclusions.
▪ She lived for the day when she could crunch numbers in the dry air of West Texas.
▪ The computer then crunches all the numbers and churns out not only the winner but the final score.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Broken window glass crunched under foot.
▪ He drank his orange juice and crunched a half burnt piece of toast.
▪ Jill was reading the paper, crunching a raw carrot as she read.
▪ Kids were crunching graham crackers and drinking juice.
▪ Miguel, crunching on a mouthful of chips, wiped the cheese from his beard.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ He staggered round the rear of the couch, feet crunching in plaster, and sat down.
▪ No, the sound of crunching from the hallway confirmed that Holmes was having a remote control snack.
▪ She popped a fragment of biscuit into her mouth and crunched it primly with her front teeth.
▪ The Don Eusebio crunched into the Zamboanga wharf at noon, four hours behind schedule.
▪ The room was lit by a red light from the burning houses behind it as Anne crunched over broken crockery and plaster.
▪ They crunch those numbers with their calculators and spreadsheets.
▪ We walked along in silence, the snow crunching beneath our feet.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Crunch

Crunch \Crunch\ (kr[u^]nch), v. i. [imp. & p. p. Crunched (kr[u^]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.

    And their white tusks crunched o'er the whiter skull.
    --Byron.

  2. To grind or press with violence and noise.

    The ship crunched through the ice.
    --Kane.

  3. To emit a grinding or craunching noise.

    The crunching and ratting of the loose stones.
    --H. James.

Crunch

Crunch \Crunch\, v. t. To crush with the teeth; to chew with a grinding noise; to craunch; as, to crunch a biscuit.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
crunch

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.

Wiktionary
crunch

n. 1 A noisy crackling sound; the sound usually associated with crunching. 2 A critical moment or event. 3 (context exercise English) A form of abdominal exercise, based on a sit-up but in which the lower back remains in contact with the floor. vb. 1 To crush something, especially food, with a noisy crackling sound. 2 To be crush with a noisy crackling sound. 3 (label en slang) To calculate or otherwise process (e.g. ''to crunch numbers'': to perform mathematical calculations). 4 To grind or press with violence and noise.

WordNet
crunch
  1. n. 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]

  4. v. make crunching noises; "his shoes were crunching on the gravel" [syn: scranch, scraunch, crackle]

  5. press or grind with a crunching noise [syn: cranch, craunch, grind]

  6. chew noisily; "The children crunched the celery sticks" [syn: munch]

  7. reduce to small pieces or particles by pounding or abrading; "grind the spices in a mortar"; "mash the garlic" [syn: grind, mash, bray, comminute]

Wikipedia
Crunch

Crunch may refer to:

Crunch (exercise)

The crunch is one of the most common abdominal exercises. It primarily works the rectus abdominis muscle and also works the obliques.

Crunch (programming block)

CRUNCH is a former Saturday morning programming block dedicated to animation on the Canadian television channel YTV. CRUNCH premiered on September 9, 2006, replacing The Zone Summer Weekends hosted by Sugar and Carlos, and "Vortex" hosted by Paula. From its beginning until mid September 2008, it was hosted by Ajay Fry. Starting October 4, 2008, Andy Chapman (not to be confused with Andy from the YTV show, Prank Patrol) became the host.

The theme of the new programming block was a new holiday called "day 6", where there is no homework, chores or hobbies, such as music classes which could interrupt a kid's day during the hours of 7:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. (the hours that the CRUNCH programming block aired). YTV promoted the new programming block by inviting kids to download a kit which included door hangers informing others that day 6 was on and no chores and homework were being completed. There were also flyers which contained many of the programming block's slogans and a large notebook poster.

The hosted portions of CRUNCH were different than other programming blocks. Rather than having a host talk for 5 minutes after a show, it was divided into two parts: one during the second commercial break, and one during the credits. Crunch also used special on-screen bugs. Sister block The Zone followed its footsteps on September 3, 2007.

Crunch (Impellitteri album)

Crunch (2000) is the sixth full-length studio album by Impellitteri.

Crunch (Cry Wolf album)

Second album released by the glam rock band Cry Wolf

Crunch (book)

Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed? (And Other Unsolved Economic Mysteries) (ISBN 978-1-57675-477-1) is a book written by Jared Bernstein, Chief Economist and Economic Policy Advisor to Vice President Joe Biden, and published in 2008. In it, Bernstein offers a layman's introduction to how the U.S. economic system works. Using economic inequality as the basis of his argument, Bernstein explains why Americans still feel squeezed during boom times, what he believes is wrong with the economy, and how he believes it could be improved for the greater common good.

Usage examples of "crunch".

But this allosaurus dated from before the time of true magic and it gave a full-hard chomp, the kind that crunches bones.

The alumroot was ripped out of the ground and crunched to pieces, its juices squirting.

I could hear the doors open and close and then the crunch of footsteps and Marty Anaheim came around the corner of the restaurant wearing a white linen suit over a black tank top.

Leaves covered the ground, crunching beneath her feet as Arden walked through them.

With a single easy bending stride, he slid his shovel crunching beneath the pile of stony dirt, half straightened, pivoted, and slung the shovelful into the fire, a smooth swinging movement, the heel of the shovel ringing on the baseplate of the door.

She nicked the polluters, the dealers in banned biomaterials, the companies who crunched one gene sequence too many: it was up to the boffins to sort out the detail.

The noise of the iron-teethed rollers crunching the lumps of coal, and the bang and rattle of ponderous machinery were never before so loud and discordant, and the black streams moving down their narrow channels never passed beneath these dizzy boys in monotony quite so dull and ceaseless as they were passing this day.

With only the main and fore topsails drawing, the Bucephalas crunched into the side of the Penchester Castle.

LaChaise crunched through the sparse snow on fourwheel drive, then they got out of the truck into the cold and Butters unlocked the trailer.

I could hear Chango and then the other one, crunching on the gravel in the drive, and then leaving and walking back out to Camino Chiquito.

Ti insist on docking to the Superjumper, Silver realized, as the crunch and shudder of their impact with the docking clamps reverberated through the pusher.

Bendix lightware number cruncher was in the centre of the room, a steel-blue globe one metre in diameter, sitting on a pedestal at chest height.

He leaned back in the chair as his mind grappled with the enormity of what he had just seen, what the cruncher assured him was true.

Jerry Cruncher stood to one side and looked on in silence, sucking on his pipe.

A wet suck on his pipe told the world what Jerry Cruncher felt about that kind of efficiency.