- crunch (v.)
- 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.
- scrunch (v.)
- 1825, "to bite," intensive form of crunch (v.); ultimately imitative. Meaning "to squeeze" is recorded from 1835 (implied in scrunched). Related: Scrunching.
- number-crunch
- "To process (large amounts of numerical data)", 1970s; earliest use found in Wireless World. From number + crunch, after number crunching.