crunch

To crush something, especially food, with a noisy crackling sound.

When I came home, Susan was watching TV with her feet up on the couch, crunching a piece of celery.

And their white tusks crunch'd o'er the whiter skull,

To be crushed with a noisy crackling sound.

Beetles crunched beneath the men's heavy boots as they worked.

To calculate or otherwise process (e.g. to crunch numbers: to perform mathematical calculations). Presumably from the sound made by mechanical calculators.

That metadata makes it much easier for the search engine to crunch the data for queries.

To grind or press with violence and noise.

The sound of our vessel crunching her way through the new ice is not easy to be described.

The departure was not unduly prolonged.[…]Within the door Mrs. Spoker hastily imparted to Mrs. Love a few final sentiments on the subject of Divine Intention in the disposition of buckets; farewells and last commiserations; a deep, guttural instigation to the horse; and the wheels of the waggonette crunched heavily away into obscurity.

To emit a grinding or crunching noise.

There were sounds in the air above his head – sounds of the crunching and rattling of the loose, smooth stones as his neighbors moved about[…]

A noisy crackling sound; the sound usually associated with crunching.

A critical moment or event.

It always pains me (slightly) when a flaming young radical like Neil Miller turns out when the crunch comes to be such an ardent defender of the status quo.

The friends, on the contrary, argue that Job does not "know", that only God knows; yet, when it comes to the crunch, they themselves seem to know as much as God knows: for example, that Job is a guilty sinner.

A problem that leads to a crisis.

The crunch is characterized by extremely depressed liquidity and deteriorated balance sheet positions for households, corporations, and financial institutions[…]

A form of abdominal exercise, based on a sit-up but in which the lower back remains in contact with the floor.

But even I draw the line at “doing crunches” in designer clothes. Fashion sneakers are for swanking around the shops, not for running in. And so, like everyone else, I wear grotty old tracksuits earmarked for Oxfam, and tragic free festival T-shirts that give away my age.

The overtime work required to catch up and finish a project, usually in the final weeks of development before release.