blacken vs sully

blacken

verb
  • To make dirty. 

  • To defame or sully. 

  • To cook (meat or fish) by coating with pepper, etc., and quickly searing in a hot pan. 

  • To become black. 

  • To cause to be or become black. 

sully

verb
  • To soil or stain; to dirty. 

  • To corrupt or damage. 

  • To become soiled or tarnished. 

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