Home / Words / scrunchNo. 0261

scrunch

/skrʌntʃ//skrʌntʃ/·verb
to squeeze or crumple something into a small, tight mass
Fig. 1 — The morning paper lies flat on the desk — masthead, headline, two columns of print, one grey photograph.
01Definition

To scrunch is to close your grip on something soft until it draws up small — foil into a ball, a wet towel, a page that came out wrong. An intensive form of crunch, first recorded in the early 1800s, the word does the sound of the act: informal, tactile, always small-scale. It almost always travels with up (scrunch up the wrapper) and turns readily on the body — you scrunch up your nose at a smell, your eyes against the sun — and on hair, squeezed in the palm to set curls, which is where the scrunchie got its name.

02In use
  • iHe scrunched the sweet wrapper into a ball and flicked it at the bin.
  • iiShe scrunched up her nose at the first sip and pushed the glass away.
  • iiiScrunch the foil tightly around the fish so no steam can escape.
03Collocations
  • scrunch up your nose
  • scrunch into a ball
  • scrunch your hair
  • scrunched-up paper
  • the scrunch of gravel

Family scrunched-up (adjective) · scrunchie (noun)

04Relations

=crumple, squeeze, wad up, crush, bunch up

≠smooth, unfold, spread

06TOEFL & IELTS

Conversational vocabulary, not academic: no IELTS examiner expects scrunch in an essay, but in Speaking it is exactly the kind of precise, informal verb that lifts a description — 'I scrunched the map into my pocket' says more than 'put'. The initial /skr/ needs a clean start (it is crunch with an s-, not 'shrunch'). Keep it for small, soft, hand-sized things: paper, fabric, faces, hair; a car is crumpled, never scrunched.

07Asked
What does scrunch up mean?
To squeeze something soft into a small, tight, wrinkled mass — scrunch up a receipt, a tissue, a page of bad ideas. Dictionaries treat 'scrunch up' as the verb's home form: with hands involved, the particle almost always comes along. Without it, the word often shifts to its sound sense instead — gravel scrunches underfoot — so the up is a useful signal that squeezing, not crunching, is meant.
What does scrunching mean for hair?
Squeezing handfuls of damp hair upward toward the scalp, holding each squeeze a moment, and releasing — the palm does to hair exactly what it does to a page, and the compression encourages waves and curls to form as it dries. The sense is a straight extension of the verb: small, soft material pressed into a tighter shape by a closing hand.
Why is a scrunchie called a scrunchie?
Because of what its fabric does. The hair tie — patented by Rommy Revson in 1987 and first sold under the brand Scünci — is an elastic sheathed in cloth that scrunches: the fabric gathers and wrinkles up around the band as it grips the hair. The -ie suffix made the verb wearable, and the word soon generalised far beyond the brand. Both spellings, scrunchie and scrunchy, are accepted.
What does it mean to scrunch your face or nose?
To pull the features into a tight, wrinkled knot — at a smell, a taste, bright light or hard thinking. The face does briefly what the page in the scene above does permanently: its smooth surface draws up into creases. English keeps this sense affectionate and small-scale; a scrunched nose signals mild distaste or effort, never the collapse that 'her face crumpled' reports.
Is scrunch a real word, and is it informal?
Fully real and firmly informal. It has been in print since the early nineteenth century as an intensive of crunch, and dictionaries carry it with an informal label — the word belongs to speech, fiction and instructions, not academic prose. Use it where its smallness is the point: paper, foil, fabric, faces; formal writing would reach for compress or crumple instead.
What is the difference between scrunch and crumple?
Scale, intent and grip. Scrunching is deliberate and hand-sized: one squeeze, a tight ball, usually on purpose. Crumpling can happen to anything from a napkin to a car, needs no hand at all, and often reports damage rather than intention. So you scrunch foil to fit it in the bin, but a bumper is crumpled — and a face may do either, scrunching at a lemon, crumpling at bad news.