They Saw It And They Took It
inb4 anyone on my feed thinks about the reason Birmingham, an area where Tolkien spent much of his youth, was the heart of the Black Country, and about smoke regulations, and wonders whether this was a pun to begin with.
*checks*
The word was in use in Britain at least 30 years before The Hobbit was published. It checks out.
And we already know that the depiction of Mordor is heavily influenced by Tolkien’s experience of industry expanding to his part of England during his WWI tour of duty.