Excerpt from "Dust Tracks on a Road"

The title of Zora Neale Hurston's autobiography "Dust Tracks on a Road" suggests an image of a wandering soul. With this list, you can follow her tracks backwards to the moment a pig pushed her into taking the first step.

Here are all the word lists to support the reading of Grade 7 Unit 1's texts from SpringBoard's Common Core ELA series: The Road Not Taken, Choices, Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, Dust Tracks on a Road, Bad Boy, Why Couldn't I Have Been Named Ashley?, Phaethon, Daedalus and Icarus, Arachne, The Lion, the Fox, and the Stag, A Note from the Author, creation myths
10 words 179 learners

Learn words with Flashcards and other activities

Definition First
Print Flashcards

Other learning activities

Answer a few questions about each word. Use this to prep for your next quiz! Compete with other teams in real time to see who answers the most questions correctly! Test your spelling acumen. Read the definition, listen to the word and try spelling it!

Teaching tools

Create and assign quizzes to your students to test their vocabulary. Assign learning activities including Practice, Vocabulary Jams and Spelling Bees to your students, and monitor their progress in real-time.

Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. inclination
    a characteristic likelihood of or natural disposition
    I was strong, crawling well, but showed no inclination to use my feet.
  2. allowance
    a permissible difference
    They made allowances for my weight, but yet, that was no real reason for my not trying.
  3. convince
    make realize the truth or validity of something
    That is, she didn't instruct me in detail, but she convinced me that I really ought to try.
  4. convoy
    the act of escorting while in transit
    Everything was going along all right, until the sow with her litter of pigs in convoy came abreast of the door.
  5. sow
    an adult female hog
    Her heart must have stood still when she saw the sow in there, because hogs have been known to eat human flesh.
  6. scramble
    climb awkwardly, as if by rushing hastily
    I lost that in scrambling to my feet and she was eating it.
  7. wander
    move about aimlessly or without any destination
    The strangest thing about it was that once I found the use of my feet, they took to wandering
  8. urge
    a strong, restless desire
    I would wander off in the woods all alone, following some inside urge to go places.
  9. tendency
    an inclination to do something
    I don't know why it never occurred to her to connect my tendency with my father, who didn't have a thing on his mind but this town and the next one.
  10. bound
    governed by fate
    Some children are just bound to take after their fathers in spite of women's prayers.
Created on Fri Aug 22 11:52:56 EDT 2014 (updated Fri Aug 22 22:46:11 EDT 2014)

Sign up now (it’s free!)

Whether you’re a teacher or a learner, Vocabulary.com can put you or your class on the path to systematic vocabulary improvement.