The Road: Pages 203–287

by Cormac McCarthy
In this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, a man and a boy struggle for survival in a desolate, post-apocalyptic landscape.

This list covers pages 203–287 of the 2006 Vintage International edition.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4

Here is a link to our lists for All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy.
15 words 729 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. portico
    porch or entrance to a building consisting of a covered area
    They stood in front of the house looking at it. There was a gravel drive that curved away to the south. A brick loggia. Double stairs that swept up to the columned portico.
  2. lintel
    a horizontal beam over a door or window
    He lit the fire and smoke curled up over the painted wooden lintel and rose to the ceiling and curled down again.
  3. facet
    a smooth surface (as of a bone or cut gemstone)
    He fanned the blaze with a magazine and soon the flue began to draw and the fire roared in the room lighting up the walls and the ceiling and the glass chandelier in its myriad facets.
  4. myriad
    a large indefinite number
    He remembered waking once on such a night to the clatter of crabs in the pan where he’d left steakbones from the night before. Faint deep coals of the driftwood fire pulsing in the onshore wind. Lying under such a myriad of stars.
  5. promontory
    a natural elevation
    At the end of the strand their way was blocked by a headland and they left the beach and took an old path up through the dunes and through the dead seaoats until they came out upon a low promontory.
  6. stanchion
    any vertical post or rod used as a support
    It had been a twin-masted rig of some sort but the masts were broken off close to the deck and the only thing remaining topside were some brass cleats and a few of the rail stanchions along the edge of the deck.
  7. perverse
    deviating from what is considered moral or right or proper
    Still there was something perverse in his searching.
  8. dovetail
    fit together tightly or easily
    The last thing he found was a square oak box with dovetailed corners and a brass plate let into the lid.
  9. sextant
    an instrument for measuring angular distance
    Inside was a brass sextant, possibly a hundred years old.
  10. imponderable
    difficult or impossible to evaluate with precision
    Something imponderable shifting out there in the dark.
  11. bollard
    a strong post
    They walked out on the pier, the rough boards dark with tar and fastened down with spikes to the timbers underneath. Wooden bollards.
  12. ponderous
    slow and laborious because of weight
    Perhaps in the world’s destruc­tion it would be possible at last to see how it was made. Oceans, mountains. The ponderous counterspectacle of things ceasing to be.
  13. derelict
    worn and broken down by hard use
    They walked out the long spit of tidal mud where a small
    boat lay half buried and stood there looking at it. It was altogether derelict.
  14. encroach
    impinge or infringe upon
    Old dreams encroached upon the waking world.
  15. loess
    a fine accumulation of clay and silt deposited by the wind
    The wax spattered on the stones. Tracks of unknown creatures in the mortified loess.
Created on Tue Aug 07 10:22:17 EDT 2018 (updated Wed Aug 06 12:16:03 EDT 2025)

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