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crunch

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crunch


  5  definitions  found 
 
  From  Webster's  Revised  Unabridged  Dictionary  (1913)  [web1913]: 
 
  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. 
 
  And  their  white  tusks  crunched  o'er  the  whiter 
  skull.  --Byron. 
 
  2.  To  grind  or  press  with  violence  and  noise. 
 
  The  ship  crunched  through  the  ice.  --Kane. 
 
  3.  To  emit  a  grinding  or  craunching  noise. 
 
  The  crunching  and  ratting  of  the  loose  stones.  --H. 
  James. 
 
  From  Webster's  Revised  Unabridged  Dictionary  (1913)  [web1913]: 
 
  Crunch  \Crunch\,  v.  t. 
  To  crush  with  the  teeth;  to  chew  with  a  grinding  noise;  to 
  craunch;  as  to  crunch  a  biscuit. 
 
  From  WordNet  r  1.6  [wn]: 
 
  crunch 
  n  1:  the  sound  of  something  crunching;  "he  heard  the  crunch  of 
  footsteps  on  the  gravel  path" 
  2:  the  act  of  crushing  [syn:  {crush},  {compaction}] 
  v  1:  make  crunching  noises;  "his  shoes  wre  crunching  on  the 
  gravel"  [syn:  {scranch},  {scraunch},  {crackle}] 
  2:  make  a  crunching  noise,  as  of  an  engine  lacking  lubricants 
  [syn:  {crump},  {thud},  {scrunch}] 
  3:  press  or  grind  with  a  crunching  noise  [syn:  {cranch},  {craunch}, 
  {grind}] 
  4:  chew  noisily;  "The  chidren  crunched  the  celery  sticks"  [syn: 
  {munch}] 
  5:  reduce  to  small  pieces  or  particles  by  pounding  or  abrading; 
  "grind  the  spices  in  a  mortar";  "mash  the  garlic"  [syn:  {grind}, 
  {mash},  {bray},  {comminute}] 
 
  From  Jargon  File  (4.2.3,  23  NOV  2000)  [jargon]: 
 
  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. 
 
 
 
  From  The  Free  On-line  Dictionary  of  Computing  (13  Mar  01)  [foldoc]: 
 
  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  "#"  ({ASCII}  35).  Used  at  {XEROX}  and 
  {CMU},  among  other  places. 
 
  4.  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. 
 
  [{Jargon  File}] 
 
 




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