[W/K] :: crunch

  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

  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.
        [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]

  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]

  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
  
  

  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 crunch(ing)' 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.
  
  

  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)