Word: crunch
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...typically quiet Scandinavian night for the scattered residents of the Blekinge archipelago on Sweden's southeast coast. Suddenly their rustic peace was shattered by something that went bump in the dark. "First we heard a gigantic crunch," recalls one resident of the 60-is-land group. "There was a lot of rumbling. The whole island shook." Some of the hardy islanders heard the sounds of a diesel engine racing and blamed the whole incident on Swedish naval maneuvers. The community went back to sleep...
Thus went Operation Big Crunch, endorsed by none other than the august French jewelry firm of Cartier. The stunt was aimed at discouraging the lucrative rip-off of luxury goods through counterfeiting. The crushed timepieces, which will go on display in Cartier stores around the world, were phony renditions of the company's famous $650 Tank watch. They were nabbed en route from Zurich to Tijuana by alert U.S. Customs inspectors. Once in Mexico, the fakes could have been sold for $300 to $400 each...
...Peace-and-play-a-few-games-of-Monopoly-while-you-wait syndrome." During the office's peak hours, it is not uncommon for the operators to receive more calls then they can handle at once, in which case they simply answer the calls in order. The worst crunch comes between noon and two in the afternoon, when the operators take their lunch hours, and on weekends, when the staff is reduced from eight to three. (On football Saturdays, a fourth operator is brought in.) As it happens, these are the very times that most callers have occasion...
...Democratic Congressman from Oklahoma who chairs the House Budget Committee. In the battle over figures that now commands the front pages and more time than the Join Chancellors probably would like to give it on the nightly news, Jones has been particularly prescient and responsible. He saw the budget crunch coming back in 1972 when he was first elected to Congress. "The Government even then was running away from the people," he says...
...into a Rabbit sort of rhythm." By then, Updike realized that still another sequel might occur to him: "I left some dangling threads in that book, possibly to be picked up later. But the real shape of Rabbit Is Rich didn't occur to me until the gas crunch of June...