muddy vs tar

muddy

verb
  • To confuse (a person or their thinking); to muddle. 

  • To become contaminated or impure. 

  • To make (something) impure; to contaminate. 

  • To make (a colour) dirty, dull, or muted. 

  • To make (a matter, etc.) more complicated or unclear; to make a mess of (something). 

  • To cover or splash (someone or something) with mud. 

  • Sometimes followed by up: to become covered or splashed with mud; to become dirty or soiled. 

  • To make (water or some other liquid) cloudy or turbid by stirring up mud or other sediment. 

  • To damage (a person or their reputation); to sully, to tarnish. 

  • Of water or some other liquid: to become cloudy or turbid. 

adj
  • Of the air: not fresh; impure, polluted. 

  • Originally, morally or religiously wrong; corrupt, sinful; now, morally or legally dubious; shady, sketchy. 

  • Of a colour: not bright: dirty, dull. 

  • Dirty, filthy. 

  • Of water or some other liquid: containing mud or (by extension) other sediment in suspension; cloudy, turbid. 

  • Of or relating to mud; also, having the characteristics of mud, especially in colour or taste. 

  • Of an image: blurry or dim. 

  • Of sound (especially during performance, recording, or playback): indistinct, muffled. 

  • Covered or splashed with, or full of, mud (“wet soil”). 

  • Soiled with feces. 

  • Of light: cloudy, opaque. 

  • Of speech, thinking, or writing: ambiguous or vague; or confused, incoherent, or mixed-up; also, poorly expressed. 

  • Not clear. 

noun
  • The edible mud crab or mangrove crab (Scylla serrata). 

tar

verb
  • To besmirch. 

  • To create a tar archive. 

  • To coat with tar. 

noun
  • A file produced by such a program. 

  • A black, oily, sticky, viscous substance, consisting mainly of hydrocarbons derived from organic materials such as wood, peat, or coal. 

  • A Persian long-necked, waisted string instrument, shared by many cultures and countries in the Middle East and the Caucasus. 

  • A solid residual byproduct of tobacco smoke. 

  • A single-headed round frame drum originating in North Africa and the Middle East. 

  • Black tar, a form of heroin. 

  • Coal tar. 

  • A program for archiving files, common on Unix systems. 

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