Crunch

An echoic word that derives from the much earlier and now obsolete word craunch, which dates from the early 1600s and means to crush or grind with the teeth. Its more modern version crunch dates from the late 18th/early 19th century. Crunch meaning the critical moment in expressions like when it comes to the crunch was coined by Winston Churchill in 1939 when he was talking about Spain in the aftermath of its civil war. “Whether Spain will be allowed to find its way back to sanity and health, depends upon the general adjustment or outcome of the European crunch.” This was the first use of the word in such a context and because of Churchill’s fame and high profile, crunch was widely taken up to mean the critical moment from the mid-20th century onwards. To crunch numbers or data, meaning to assemble and analyse such matter, dates from the 1980s.