noun
informal1A critical or vital point; a crucial or difficult question.
- ‘the big cruncher—have you got anything to contribute to skating?’
- ‘But for me, this is the punchline cruncher: The House of Commons is, and will remain, a GM-free zone.’
- ‘And when you're done, I'd say you're half-way to getting the winner of that Turkey-England cruncher.’
- ‘It's the mental challenge that's the cruncher.’
- ‘But the real cruncher to his view is provided by the department itself.’
problem, difficult question, vexed question, difficulty, quandary, dilemma2A computer, system, or person able to perform very large or complex operations.
See also number cruncher- ‘a global information cruncher’
- ‘PDA users have known for some time now that the devices are more than just contact database crunchers.’
- ‘Windows booted without any hiccups, and to test load performance I ran a cruncher (Seti@Home) on it for about 10 minutes before concluding that the new speeds were solid.’
- ‘You want proof this system was invented by a bunch of clueless numbers crunchers?’
- ‘If you go by what the experts and data crunchers say, the worker bees of the world are dooming the civilized, unhurried meal to an untimely death.’
- ‘With their own little super, engineering and research teams can bid adieu to month-long delays while waiting for access to a jumbo cruncher at a National Science Foundation supercomputing center.’
- ‘The company's code crunchers might be boring and bland, but they are also disciplined and driven.’
- ‘A ‘Supercomputer Room’, chilled by strong air-conditioners awaits the arrival ‘soon’, through a soft loan, of an estimated US $19.5 million terabyte cruncher.’
- ‘Tall, slim and athletic, she looks more like a beach volleyball player than a nerdy data cruncher.’
- ‘Now you'd think if I can figure this out, one of our big time money crunchers could too, wouldn't you?’
- ‘In a very smart move, the PPC family was designed as a 64-bit cruncher with backward binary-compatibility for 32-bit applications.’
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