Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Semisolid material such as the type precipitated by sewage treatment.
- n. Mud, mire, or ooze covering the ground or forming a deposit, as on a riverbed.
- n. Finely broken or half-formed ice on a body of water, especially the sea.
- n. An agglutination or aggregation of blood cells forming a semisolid mass that often impedes circulation.
- v. To agglutinate or aggregate into a semisolid mass; form a sludge. Used of blood cells.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Mud; mire.
- n. A pasty mixture of snow or ice and water; half-melted snow; slush.
- n. In mining, the fine powder produced by the action of the drill or borer in a bore-hole, when mixed with water, as is usually the case in large and deep bore-holes. The powder when dry is often called bore-meal.
- n. Refuse from various operations, as from the washing of coal; also, refuse acid and alkali solutions from the agitators, in the refining of crude petroleum: sometimes used, but incorrectly, as the equivalent of slimes, or the very finely comminuted material coming from the stamps. See Slime, 3.
- n. The more or less viscid mud thrown down from dilute waste soap-liquors of wool-scouring, cotton-bleaching, and dyeing industries when such liquors are treated with crude aluminium sulphate and milk of lime. The remaining effluent is thus in a large measure purified, but the sludge thrown down has usually little value, even as a manure.
- n. The precipitated solid matter in sewage, usually collected in settling-basins in sewage-disposal works after chemical treatment and filtration. Often pressed into cakes.
- n. The sediment, in the form of mud, which collects in a steam-boiler.
- n. Incorrectly, by abbreviation, an opening in a steam-boiler for the removal of sludge or mud; also, the lid which covers such an opening.
- n. A sand-pump or mud-pumping device for removing sludge from a sink or a bore-hole.
- n. The silt-like deposit in the bottom of an electrolytic cell.
Wiktionary
- n. A generic term for solids separated from suspension in a liquid.
- n. A residual semi-solid material left from industrial, water treatment, or wastewater treatment processes.
- n. A sediment of accumulated minerals in a steam boiler.
- n. A mass of small pieces of ice on the surface of a body of water.
- v. intransitive, informal to slump or slouch.
- v. intransitive to slop or drip slowly.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Mud; mire; soft mud; slush.
- n. Small floating pieces of ice, or masses of saturated snow.
- n. (Mining) See Slime, 4.
- n. Anything resembling mud or slush; as: (a) A muddy or slimy deposit from sweage. (b) Mud from a drill hole in boring. (c) Muddy sediment in a steam boiler. (d) Settling of cottonseed oil, used in making soap, etc. (e) A residuum of crude paraffin-oil distillation.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the precipitate produced by sewage treatment
- n. any thick, viscous matter
Etymologies
- Perhaps alteration of dialectal slutch, mire. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“It's pretty funny how Maureen "sludgenurse" Reilly just constantly uses the term sludge over and over, along with all sorts of standard alarmist tactics in "arguing" her point.”
“However, the sludge is then put into Giant Vats where anarobic bacteria (through their metabolism) break down the sludge and forms the methane. this methane is then collected and used to generate power for the Sewage treatment plant.”
POO POWER: Giant Vat of Crap to Produce Natural Gas for CA | Inhabitat
“The red sludge is a byproduct of bauxite, a material used in manufacturing aluminum.”
Voice of America: Evacuated Hungarians May Return to Toxic Mud Villages
“The sludge is so corrosive that it has burned people as it seeped through their clothing.”
Voice of America: EU: Hungarian Toxic Flood Threatens Danube River
“The red sludge is a byproduct of processing bauxite, a basic material for manufacturing aluminum.”
Voice of America: Toxic Sludge From Hungary Spill Hits Danube
“Treated sludge is often stored in ponds where the water eventually evaporates, leaving behind a largely safe red clay.”
The Huffington Post: Toxic Sludge Could Spill Again, Hungary Government Warns
“Red sludge is a byproduct of the refining of bauxite into alumina, the basic material for manufacturing aluminum.”
The Huffington Post: Toxic Sludge Could Spill Again, Hungary Government Warns
“According to MAL, at least 95 percent of the sludge is still in the reservoir.”
The Huffington Post: Toxic Sludge Could Spill Again, Hungary Government Warns
“In theory, the red sludge is put into a holding pond, where water evaporates and turns it into a hardpack that can be used for construction projects.”
“The Center for Disease Control engineer said, 'We don't know what this sludge is but we know it's safe,'" Connett says.”
The Huffington Post: Dr. Joseph Mercola: The Health Hazards of Water Fluoridation (VIDEO)
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘sludge’.
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ENVI - water protection
surface system, supply, substrate, subsoil, superficial deposit, sub-basin, stream gaging sta..., spillway, stratification, surface fresh water, stop valve, sprinkler and 398 more...
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A Glossary of Filth
A compilation of those nitty-gritty yucky terms for substances and situations that we prefer not to encounter. Please folks, keep it clean; avoid the overly offensive ones.
"the terms...schmutz, smegma, muck, snarge, sewerage, mecomium, sewage, sebum, toe jam, pus, sludge, backwash and 130 more...
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IMCO - EU nomenclature
includes words of the "Prodcom list"
veal, valve, used, yak, wax, wan, teak, vat, vas, strip, use, strap and 4515 more...
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ENVI - drinking water
hydraulically ope..., water meter, fire hydrant, special joints, service connection, pipe material, pipe, air valve, armature, underground tank, storage tank, surface water pum... and 79 more...
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sewerly words
words that have to do with the sewers and the stuff that goes into them can be as gross as you like but stay on the topic of pipes poop and piles of sludge animals found in there are also welcome
sewage, sewerage, sludge, feces, poop, sewers, gunk, rat, mutant ninja turtles, alligator, sanitary sewer, storm sewer and 10 more...
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Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV
Words from the songs of Frank Black, a.k.a. Black Francis
zugzwang, valhalla, montalvo, ishist, tritons, mosh, siam, llano del rio, protohuman, tumbleweeds, ludwigshafen, ballyhoos and 349 more...
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SoSheShall's list
slurp, coeur, slurple, glop, perp, fluarxx, ropechno, herrherr, burrduhherrherr, sloppy, cheezie balls, eccentric and 634 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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whatever1013's Words
chocolate, sesquipedalophobia, discombobulated, callipygian, retronym, squirm, cobalt blue, plethora, onomatopoeia, blowhard, strumpet, shush and 173 more...
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Words for ice and snow
Environmental Ice and Snow
(excluding all the food ice)ice, icicle, frazil, frasil, sleet, slush, snow, flurry, snowfall, freeze, flash-freeze, quick-freeze and 618 more...
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Lees
Items of little or no value that are left behind by physical or biological processes other than passing through an alimentary canal. See also Valse's Leftovers and reesetee's Hogwash! for other tak...
lees, dross, dregs, orts, debris, jetsam, flotsam, rubbage, rubbish, trash, refuse, junk and 130 more...
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stpeter's Words
abase, abasement, abashed, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abhorrent, abide, abject, ablation, abnegation and 3536 more...
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splat
splat, blob, blorp, slop, spatter, spit, blip, blat, splatter, blot, drip, drib and 15 more...
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Ugly Words
Words that I think sound "ugly" or have an "ugly" connotation.
vomit, wart, grime, sludge, puke, mulch, drudge, garbage, secrete, puss, zit, membrane and 9 more...
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Gross words
pungent, slime, mold, carrion, fester, staunch, moist, flaccid, flabby, masticate, heinous, inseminate and 39 more...
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Capybara's Words
Tweets
Looking for tweets for sludge.

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