The past week I've been busy crunching the numbers for taxes. Now that I'm out of that tunnel (but barely), I have time to wonder: did people crunch the numbers before computers? Before adding machines? And why crunch? It sounds like we're eating our arithmetical efforts.
And you know what happens when I start to wonder...
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The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer has this to say:
crunch numbers. Perform numerous calculations or process a large amount of numerical data... This term originated with the computer age and indeed still applies mostly to the operations of computers. [second half of 1900s]
So, my original guess that this arrived with the computer age seems to be correct. Looking around a little more, it seems most other discussions of the slang phrase crunch the numbers point back to the dictionary entry above.
Oh well. I guess that's all I've got for you this week. If anyone finds anything more about this phrase, please let me know!
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| A tip o' the Slang-o-rama hat to computer science pioneer Grace Hopper, who helped make number crunching possible. By Unknown (Smithsonian Institution) - Flickr: Grace Hopper and UNIVAC, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19763543 |
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