different between pinch vs crush

English

Etymology

From Middle English pinchen, from Old French *pinchier, pincer (“to pinch”), from Vulgar Latin *pinci?re (“to puncture, pinch”), from possible merger of *puncti?re (“a puncture, sting”), from Latin puncti? (“a puncture, prick”) and *picc?re (“to strike, sting”), from Frankish *pikk?n, from Proto-Germanic *pikk?n? (“to pick, peck, prick”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /p?nt?/
• Rhymes: -?nt?

Verb

pinch (third-person singular simple present pinches, present participle pinching, simple past and past participle pinched)

1. To squeeze a small amount of a person's skin and flesh, making it hurt.

   The children were scolded for pinching each other.

   This shoe pinches my foot.

2. To squeeze between the thumb and forefinger.
3. To squeeze between two objects.
4. (slang, transitive) To steal, usually something inconsequential.

   Someone has pinched my handkerchief!
5. (slang, transitive) To arrest or capture.
6. (horticulture) To cut shoots or buds of a plant in order to shape the plant, or to improve its yield.
7. (nautical) To sail so close-hauled that the sails begin to flutter.
8. (hunting) To take hold; to grip, as a dog does.
9. (obsolete, intransitive) To be stingy or covetous; to live sparingly.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Gower to this entry?)

   • 1788, Benjamin Franklin (attributed), Paper

     the wretch whom avarice bids to pinch and spare

10. To seize; to grip; to bite; said of animals.
11. (figuratively) To cramp; to straiten; to oppress; to starve.

    to be pinched for money

    • c. 1610?, Walter Raleigh, A Discourse of War

      want of room […] which pincheth the whole nation

    • 1902, William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture 2:

      The Christian also spurns the pinched and mumping sick-room attitude, and the lives of saints are full of a kind of callousness to diseased conditions of body which probably no other human records show.

12. To move, as a railroad car, by prying the wheels with a pinch.
13. (obsolete) To complain or find fault.
    • 1809, Alexander Chalmers ed. The Works of the English Poets, from Cahucer to Cowper, Vol. 1, modern rendering of poem imputed to Geoffrey Chaucer, "A Ballad which Chaucer made in Praise or rather Dispraise of Women for their Doubleness":

      Therefore who so them accuse

      Of any double entencion,

      To speake, rowne, other to muse,

      To pinch at their condicion,

      All is but false collusion,

      I dare rightwell the sothe express,

      They have no better protection,

      But shrowd them vnder doubleness.

Derived terms

• pinch off
• pinch out
• pinch a loaf

Translations

Noun

pinch (plural pinches)

1. The action of squeezing a small amount of a person's skin and flesh, making it hurt.
2. A close compression of anything with the fingers.

   I gave the leather of the sofa a pinch, gauging the texture.

3. A small amount of powder or granules, such that the amount could be held between fingertip and thumb tip.
4. An awkward situation of some kind (especially money or social) which is difficult to escape.
   • 1955, Rex Stout, "Die Like a Dog", in Three Witnesses, October 1994 Bantam edition, ?ISBN, page 171:

     It took nerve and muscle both to carry the body out and down the stairs to the lower hall, but he damn well had to get it out of his place and away from his door, and any of those four could have done it in a pinch, and it sure was a pinch.

5. A metal bar used as a lever for lifting weights, rolling wheels, etc.
6. An organic herbal smoke additive.
7. (physics) A magnetic compression of an electrically-conducting filament.
8. The narrow part connecting the two bulbs of an hourglass.
   • 2001, Terry Pratchett: Thief of Time:

     It looked like an hourglass, but all those little glittering shapes tumbling through the pinch were seconds.

9. (slang) An arrest.

Derived terms

Descendants

• ? Japanese: ??? (pinchi)

Translations

English

Etymology

From Middle English cruschen (“to crush, smash, squeeze, squash”), from Old French croissir (“to crush”), from Late Latin *cruscio (“to brush”), from Frankish *krostjan (“to crush, squeeze, squash”). Akin to Gothic ???????????????????????????????? (kriustan, “to gnash”), Old Swedish krusa (“to crush”), Middle Low German krossen (“to break”), Swedish krysta (“to squeeze”), Danish kryste (“to squash”), Icelandic kreista (“to squeeze, squash”), Faroese kroysta (“to squeeze”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /k???/
• Rhymes: -??

Noun

crush (countable and uncountable, plural crushes)

1. A violent collision or compression; a crash; destruction; ruin.
2. Violent pressure, as of a moving crowd.
3. A crowd that produces uncomfortable pressure.

   a crush at a reception

4. A violent crowding.
5. A crowd control barrier.
6. A drink made by squeezing the juice out of fruit.
7. (informal) An infatuation with somebody one is not dating.

   I've had a huge crush on her since we met many years ago.

   1. (informal, by extension) The human object of such infatuation or affection.
   • 2004, Chris Wallace, Character: Profiles in Presidential Courage

     It had taken nine years from the evening that Truman first showed up with a pie plate at her mother's door, but his dogged perseverance eventually won him the hand of his boyhood Sunday school crush.

8. A standing stock or cage with movable sides used to restrain livestock for safe handling.
9. (dated) A party or festive function.
   • 1890, Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray chapter 1

     Two months ago I went to a crush at Lady Brandon's.

10. (Australia) The process of crushing cane to remove the raw sugar, or the season when this process takes place.
11. (television, uncountable) The situation where certain colors are so similar as to be hard to distinguish, either as a deliberate effect or as a limitation of a display.

    black crush; white crush

Hyponyms

• (infatuation): squish

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

crush (third-person singular simple present crushes, present participle crushing, simple past and past participle crushed)

1. To press between two hard objects; to squeeze so as to alter the natural shape or integrity of it, or to force together into a mass.

   to crush grapes

   • 1769, Benjamin Blayney, King James Bible : Leviticus 22:24

     Ye shall not offer unto the Lord that which is bruised, or crushed, or broken, or cut

2. To reduce to fine particles by pounding or grinding

   Synonym: comminute

   to crush quartz

   • 1912, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes, Chapter 1

     With a wild scream he was upon her, tearing a great piece from her side with his mighty teeth, and striking her viciously upon her head and shoulders with a broken tree limb until her skull was crushed to a jelly.

3. (figuratively) To overwhelm by pressure or weight.

   After the corruption scandal, the opposition crushed the ruling party in the elections

4. (figuratively, colloquial) To do impressively well at (sports events; performances; interviews; etc.).

   They had a gig recently at Madison Square—totally crushed it!

5. To oppress or grievously burden.
7. To overcome completely; to subdue totally.

   The sultan's black guard crushed every resistance bloodily.
8. (intransitive) To be or become broken down or in, or pressed into a smaller compass, by external weight or force

   an eggshell crushes easily

9. (intransitive) To feel infatuation or unrequited love.

   She's crushing on him.
10. (film, television) To give a compressed or foreshortened appearance to.
    • 2003, Michel Chion, The Films of Jacques Tati (page 78)

      He frames his subject in distant close-ups (we feel the distance, due mostly to the crushed perspective brought about by the telephoto lens).

    • 2010, Birgit Bräuchler, John Postill, Theorising Media and Practice (page 319)

      They realise that trajectories, space expansion and crushing are different with different lenses, whether wide angle or telephoto, and that actors' eyelines will be altered.

11. (transitive, television) To make certain colors so similar as to be hard to distinguish, either as a deliberate effect or as a limitation of a display.

    My old TV set crushes the blacks when the brightness is lowered.

Derived terms

Synonyms

• (trans, to squeeze into a permanent new shape) squash
• (to pound or grind into fine particles) pulverize, pulverise
• (to overwhelm) overtake
• (to impress at) ace; slay at, kill

Translations

References

• crush in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

Anagrams

• Rusch, Schur, churs

Portuguese

Etymology

Borrowed from English crush.

Pronunciation

• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /?k???/, /?k???/

Noun

crush m or m f (in variation) (plural crushes or crush)

1. (colloquial) crush (a love interest)