Past tense of crump; to make a crunching sound or to crunch explosively, especially referring to artillery fire or heavy impacts.
From 'crump,' an onomatopoetic verb created to imitate the sound of an explosion or heavy impact; became especially common in World War I military slang describing artillery sounds.
Onomatopoeia like 'crump' are created by speakers trying to match sounds with words, and WWI soldiers adopted it so widely that it entered military vocabulary permanently—'the artillery crumped all night.'
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