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Common Core State Standard
LS.CCS.4/5/6 Grades 3-12: Students are asked to determine the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words through multiple choice vocabulary quizzes. Quizzes are designed to help students demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships and nuances in words, acquire and use accurately grade-appropriate general academic and domain-specific words, and gather vocabulary knowledge when considering a word or phrase important to comprehension or expression. Students are then asked to find the words within the newspaper and copy the sentence for context to its overall meaning or function in a sentence.
This Week's Word In The News 

INSPECTOR

DEFINITION:
An official employed to ensure that official regulations are obeyed, especially in public services.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents are federal employees, and misconduct allegations are typically investigated by the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility or by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of inspector General.
The Key West Citizen, 03/16/2026

Words in the News Quiz
5 High School Words

Click on the correct answer in the quiz below.
Then see if you can find the word in your newspaper -- the print edition, the website or the digital edition and copy the sentence for context. NOTE: High School words are much harder to find!


1. Reparation

To modify, as by shortening or simplifying or by skewing the content in a certain manner.

Something done or paid to compensate or make amends.

Government by a few, especially by a small faction of persons or families.

To make an accusation against.


2. Detritus

A reproductive cell having the haploid number of chromosomes, especially a mature sperm or egg capable of fusing with a gamete of the opposite sex to produce the fertilized egg.

A doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.

A product of disintegration, destruction, or wearing away; debris.

Playfully jocular; humorous


3. Usurp

Either of two points on the celestial sphere at which the ecliptic intersects the celestial equator.

To proceed completely around:

To seize another’s place, authority, or possession wrongfully.

Interchanged, given, or owed to each other.


4. Lugubrious

A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality

Belonging to the period before a war, especially the American Civil War.

Mournful, dismal, or gloomy, especially to an exaggerated or ludicrous degree.

An extremely distant, and thus old, celestial object whose power output is several thousand times that of our entire galaxy.


5. Abjure

Very talkative; garrulous.

Everyday; commonplace.

To renounce under oath; forswear.

Lacking purpose or vitality; feeble or ineffective.


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