Other forms: crunching, crunches
To crunch is to make the sound of something hard being crushed. Crunch the gravel, crunching an apple, the snow crunched.
The word is the sound. As a noun, the crunch is also a critical moment: when it comes to the crunch, meaning when the decision finally has to be made. A credit crunch is a sudden shortage of lending. In computing, to crunch numbers is to do a great deal of calculation. Note crunchy, which is high praise for food and a complaint about a gearbox.
1verbcrunchTo make the sound of something hard being crushed.
“The gravel crunched all the way up the drive.”
2nouncriticalA critical moment of decision.
“When it comes to the crunch, you can always rely on your family.”
crunch is a crushing sound, or a critical point.
Crunch is imitative and appeared in the seventeenth century as craunch. English keeps producing these words by ear — crunch, munch, scrunch and crush all sound like what they describe.
From earlier craunch, cranch, of imitative origin.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA