black gold vs sludge

black gold

noun
  • Coal. 

  • Raw petroleum; crude oil. 

  • Black pepper, in the context of being a historically valuable spice. 

  • Black-coloured gold, variously produced by patination, deposition, oxidation, etc. and used in jewellery or in high-technology applications. 

sludge

noun
  • A sediment of accumulated minerals in a steam boiler. 

  • A residual semi-solid material left from industrial, water treatment, or wastewater treatment processes. 

  • Solids separated from suspension in a liquid. 

  • A mass of small pieces of ice on the surface of a body of water. 

  • sludge metal 

verb
  • To slop or drip slowly. 

  • To slump or slouch. 

How often have the words black gold and sludge occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )