1. Make a crushing or grinding noise
   "his shoes were crunching on the gravel";
   - scranch [dialect], scraunch [dialect], crackle, scrunch
    
2. Press or grind with a crushing noise
   "He crunched the ice cubes between his teeth";
   - cranch [archaic], craunch [archaic], grind, scrunch
    
3. Crush with the teeth, making a grinding sound
   "The children crunched the celery sticks";
   - munch
    
4. Reduce to small pieces or particles by pounding or abrading
   "crunch the spices in a mortar";
   - grind, mash, bray [archaic], comminute [rare]
    
5. Process large amounts of data
   "The computer crunches numbers all day"

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, money or resources)
   "an end-of-the-year crunch"; "a financial crunch"

Derived forms: crunched, crunches, crunching

Type of: break up, chew, fragment, fragmentise [Brit], fragmentize, make noise, manducate [archaic], masticate, noise, press, resound, situation

Encyclopedia: Crunch