The Road
A list of vocabulary words
Directions: Work with a partner to locate the definitions of the following underlined words. Each
word is taken from the novel The Road and has a page number reference. Next week you will draw a
picture of the word and use it in a sentence in you writers notebook.
1. "Their light playing over the wet flowstone walls." (p. 3)
a. Definition:
2. "Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of some granitic beast." (p. 3)
a. Definition:
3. "The edge of the lake a riprap of twisted stumps, gray and weathered, the windfall trees of a hurricane
years past." (p. 13)
a. Definition:
4. "It took two days to cross that ashen scabland." (p. 16)
a. Definition:
5. "He pulled the bolt and bored out the collet with a hand drill and resleeved it with a section of pipe
he'd cut to length with a hacksaw." (p. 16-17)
a. Definition:
6. "Her nipples pipeclayed and her rib bones painted white." (p. 18)
a. Definition:
7. "Cheap stuffed furniture together with an old handmade cherrywood chifforobe." (p. 22)
a. Definition:
8. "They were discalced to a man like pilgrims of some common order for all their shoes were long since
stolen." (p. 24)
a. Definition:
9. "Their barrows were heaped with shoddy." (p. 28)
a. Definition:
b. Definition:
10. "A rich southern wood that once held mayapple and pipsissewa." (p. 39)
a. Definition:
11. "He wiped his nose on his sleeve and shouldered up his small pack and the man folded away the map
sections and rose and the boy followed him out through the gray palings of the trees to the road." (p.
43)
a. Definition:
12. "Late in the day they came to a place where the fire had crossed the road and the macadam was still
warm and further on it began to soften underfoot." (p. 48)
a. Definition:
13. "One of his eyes was burnt shut and his hair was but a nitty wig of ash upon his blackened skull." (p.
50)
a. Definition:
14. "The rank meconium." (p. 59)
a. Definition:
The Road
A list of vocabulary words
Directions: Work with a partner to locate the definitions of the following underlined words. Each
word is taken from the novel The Road and has a page number reference. Next week you will draw a
picture of the word and use it in a sentence in you writers notebook.
1. "They moved through the streets like sappers." (p. 79)
a. Definition:
2. "The teeth in their sockets like dental molds, the crude tattoos etched in some homebrewed woad." (p.
90)
a. Definition:
3. "Behind them came wagons drawn by slaves in harness and piled with goods of war and after that the
women, perhaps a dozen in number, some of them pregnant, and lastly a supplementary consort of
catamites illclothed against the cold and fitted in dogcollars and yoked each to each." (p. 92)
a. Definition:
4. "Then he stood on the tang of the shovel and raised the edge of the hatch and leaned and got hold of
it." (p. 109)
a. Definition:
5. "He found pieces of flint or chert in a ditch but in the end it was easier to rake the pliers down the side
of a rock at the bottom of which he'd made a small pile of tinder soaked in gas." (p. 129)
a. Definition:
6. "Cowled in their blankets against the cold and their breath smoking, shuffling through the black and
silky drifts." (p. 177)
a. Definition:
7. "Middens of anonymous trash." (p. 177)
a. Definition:
8. "Watching while they opened up the rock hillside ground with pick and mattock and brought to light a
great bolus of serpents perhaps a hundred in number." (p. 188)
a. Definition:
9. "The knurled lid turned in the wood grinding the paint."
a. Definition:
10. "At the tide line a woven mat of weeds and the ribs of fishes in their millions stretching along the shore
as far as eye could see like an isocline of death." (p. 222)
a. Definition:
11. "The weak sea light fell through the clerestory portholes."
a. Definition:
12. "He held it in his hand and then he fitted it back into the blue baize lining of the case and closed the lid
and snapped the latches shut and set it back in the locker and closed the door." (p. 228)
a. Definition:
13. "A yellow plastic EPIRB."
a. Definition:
14. "On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming." (p. 287).
a. Definition:
15. "He descended into a gryke in the stone and there he crouched coughing and he coughed for a long
time." (p. 11) (HINT: Grike)
a. Definition:
Appendix: Words I Couldn't Find in the Dictionary
"Oil for their little slutlamp to light the long gray dusks, the long gray dawns." (p. 7)
"In an old batboard smokehouse they found a ham gambreled up in a high corner." (p. 17)
"The new snow lay in skifts all through the woods, along the limbs and cupped in the leaves, all of it
already gray with ash." (p. 76)
"The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities." (p. 88)
"They were signs in gypsy language, lost patterans." (p. 180).
"They wrapped their feet in sailcloth and bound them up in blue plastic pampooties cut from a tarp and
they left strange tracks in their comings and goings." (p. 243)
"The salitter drying from the earth." (p. 261)
"Ten thousand dreams ensepulchred within their crozzled hearts." (p. 273)
"A veteran of old skirmishes, bearded, scarred across his cheek and the bone stoven and the one eye
wandering." (p. 282)
Source: The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Vintage International, 2006), paperback.
NAME___________________________________
Date_______________
Period_____________
Discalced/ Nitty/Rip·rap /Pipe-clay/ Macadam/ Scabland /Barrow /Chifforobe /Paling /
Pipsissewa/ Flowstone /Shoddy/ Granitic/Collet /Meconium
1)_____________________________________a layered deposit of calcium carbonate,
CaCO 3 , left by thin sheets of flowing water, as in a cave.
2)_____________________________________a coarse-grained igneous rock composed
chiefly of orthoclase and albite feldspars and of quartz, usually with lesser
amounts of one or more other minerals, as mica, hornblende, or augite.
3)___________________________________a quantity of broken stone for foundations,
revetments of embankments, etc.
4)___________________________________ to whiten with pipe clay.
5_________________________________ rough, barren, volcanic topography with thin
soils and little vegetation.
6)__________________________________________a collar or enclosing band.
7)_____________________________________________a flat, rectangular frame used for
carrying a load, especially such a frame with projecting shafts at each end for handles;
handbarrow.
Discalced/ Nitty/Rip·rap /Pipe-clay/ Macadam/ Scabland /Barrow /Chifforobe /Paling /
Pipsissewa/ Flowstone /Shoddy/ Granitic/Collet /Meconium
8)____________________________________________a piece of furniture having both
drawers and space for hanging clothes.
9)_______________________________________a fibrous material obtained by
shredding unfelted rags or waste.
10)_________________________________a pale or picket for a fence.
11)____________________________________to pave by laying and compacting
successive layers of broken stone, often with asphalt or hot tar.
12)_________________________________Infested with nits.
13)_____________________________________________ the first fecal excretion of a newborn child,
composed chiefly of bile, mucus, and epithelial cells.
14)________________________________________Barefoot, without shoes.
15_______________________________________________any evergreen plant of the genus
Chimaphila, especially C. umbellata, the leaves of which are used medicinally for their tonic,
diuretic, and astringent properties.
flow·stone noun
a layered deposit of calcium carbonate, CaCO 3 , left by thin sheets of flowing water, as
in a cave.
gran·ite noun
a coarse-grained igneous rock composed chiefly of orthoclase and albite feldspars and of quartz,
usually with lesser amounts of one or more other minerals, as mica, hornblende, or augite.
2. anything compared to this rock in great hardness, firmness, or durability.
rip·rap noun
a quantity of broken stone for foundations, revetments of embankments, etc.
2. a foundation or wall of stones thrown together irregularly.
verb (used with object)
3. to construct with or strengthen by stones, either loose or fastened with mortar.
scab·land noun Physical Geography .
rough, barren, volcanic topography with thin soils and little vegetation.
col·let noun
a collar or enclosing band.
2. the enclosing rim within which a jewel is set.
3. a slotted cylindrical clamp inserted tightly into the tapered interior of a sleeve or chuck on a
lathe to hold a cylindrical piece of work.
4. Horology . the tiny collar that supports the inner terminal of a hairspring.
pipe-clay verb (used with object)
to whiten with pipe clay.
chif·fo·robe
noun
a piece of furniture having both drawers and space for hanging clothes.
bar·row noun
a flat, rectangular frame used for carrying a load, especially such a frame with projecting shafts
at each end for handles; handbarrow.
2. a wheelbarrow.
3. British . a pushcart used by street vendors, especially by costermongers.
Shoddy
noun
a fibrous material obtained by shredding unfelted rags or waste.
pip·sis·se·wa noun
any evergreen plant of the genus Chimaphila, especially C. umbellata, the leaves of which are
used medicinally for their tonic, diuretic, and astringent properties.
pal·ing noun
a pale or picket for a fence.
2. pales collectively.
3. the act of building a fence with pales.
mac·ad·am noun
1. a macadamized road or pavement.
2. the broken stone used in making such a road.
NittyInfested with nits.
me·co·ni·um noun
1. the first fecal excretion of a newborn child, composed chiefly of bile, mucus, and epithelial
cells.
2. fecal mass released at pupation by the larvae of some insects.
3. the milky sap of the unripe seed pods of the opium poppy; crude opium.
Name_________________________
Date_________________________
Period____________________
Vocab.
The Road
Quiz
Directions: Match the word on the left with its definition on the right.
1)_________Sappers
A) The part of the blade that attaches to the handle.
2)_________Woad
B) A distress signal, usually a blinking light for boats
3)_________Catamites
C) Wavy, wormlike lines.
4)_________Tang
D) A military engineer that lays, detects, and disarms mines.
5)_________Chert
E) Cracks in limestone caused by water.
6)_________Cowled
F) A knob, knot, or other small protuberance.
7)_________Middens
G) An annual old world plant that can yield blue dye.
8)_________Bolus
H) A variety of silica that contains microcrystalline quartz.
9)_________Knurled
I) An often bright-green cotton or woolen material napped to
imitate felt and used chiefly as a cover for gaming tables.
10)________Isocline
J) Having the shape of a hood.
11)________Clerestory
K) An upper portion of a wall containing windows for
supplying natural light to a building.
12)________Baize
L) A boy kept for homosexual purposes.
13)________EPIRB
M) A series of rock strata with isoclinal folds
14)________Vermiculate
N) A small round mass of substance.
15)________Gryke
O) A dunghill or refuse heap