[Cranch appears after 1600; in early use it varied with scranch, still given by Johnson, 1755, as retained by the Scots, and now dialectal. As in other words where initial cr- and scr- interchange (cf. crab, scrab, crap, scrap, cratch, scratch), it is doubtful which of these is the original. The priority of scranch is favored by its nearness in form and sense to some Du. and LG. words. Cf. 16th c. Du., in Plantijn 1573, schranzen to split, break, evidently related to MHG. schranz breach, split, crack, rent; in Kilian 1599 schranzen to break, tear, crush, bruise; also to chew, crush with the teeth, to comminute or grind (the food) with the teeth; mod.Du. schransen to eat voraciously, WFlem. schranzen to gnash, eat with gnashing of the teeth, to craunch; also EFris. schrantsen, schranssen, to tear or snatch to oneself, to eat greedily.
On the other hand, earlier examples are at present known of cranch, and this may, as in the parallel pair crunch, scrunch, be really the earlier form. Cranch might be an onomatopœic modification of crash, which was used in the very same sense from 16th to 18th c.: see quot. 1730 from Bailey’s Folio. That association with crash, crush, has affected the word, is evidenced by the later form crunch. The original pronunciation was as in branch; the occasional pronunciation as in paunch is due to the spelling with au (chiefly since Johnson), with the obsolescence of the word in living use: cf. Thoreau’s spelling cronch.]
1. trans. = CRUNCH v. 1, 2.
1631. Massinger, Emp. East, IV. ii. We prune the orchards, and you cranch the fruit.
[1658. Rowland, trans. Moufet’s Theat. Ins., 983. They [locusts] easily eat ears of corn and scranch them with a great noise.]
1726. Swift, Gulliver, Brobdingnag, iii. The Queen … would craunch the Wing of a Lark, Bones and all, between her Teeth.
1730–6. Bailey (Folio), Cranch (scranch or crunch) between the Teeth, v. Crash. [Crash, to break with the Teeth with a Noise, as in eating green Fruit].
1760. Life & Adv. of Cat, 28. The skeleton of pigeons, a leg of which he was cranching.
1827. Montgomery, Pelican Isl., III. 185. The crocodile, the dragon of the waters … cranch’d his prey.
1853. Kane, Grinnell Exp., xxix. (1856), 249. The separated sides would come together with an explosion like a mortar, craunching the newly-formed field.
1864. Kingsley, Rom. & Teut., p. lii. Of a thousand acorns … but one shall … grow into a builder oak, the rest be craunched up by the nearest swine.
2. intr. and absol. = CRUNCH v. 1 b, 3.
1637. Heywood, Royall King, II. Wks. 1874, VI. 30. Here doe I meane to cranch, to munch, to eate.
c. 1790. Imison, Sch. Arts, II. 158. If you find it … cranch between your teeth.
1857. Mrs. Gaskell, C. Brontë, 70. You encounter strings of mill-hands … cranching in hungry haste over the cinder-paths.
1861. Sala, Dutch Pict., iii. 32. The wild beasts can’t be always howling, and yelling, and craunching.
Hence Craunching vbl. sb. and ppl. a.
1836. Gen. P. Thompson, Exerc. (1842), IV. 139. Like the cranching of a stone in plum-cake.
1855. Mrs. Gaskell, North & S., vi. A stealthy, creeping, cranching sound among the crisp fallen leaves.
1861. Holland, Less. Life, ix. 131. As a dog would … bury it [a bone], only resorting to it in the dark, for private craunching.
