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.
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. Taxonomy
► Feeling or showing haughty disdain.
► The use of unnecessarily wordy and indirect language.
► A product of disintegration, destruction, or wearing away; debris.
► Division into ordered groups or categories.
2. Antebellum
► Something done or paid to compensate or make amends.
► Belonging to the period before a war, especially the American Civil War.
► The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.
► To proceed completely around:
3. Parabola
► A factor that determines a range of variations; a boundary
► Not limited to or associated with a particular religious denomination.
► To abolish, do away with, or annul, especially by authority.
4. Oligarchy
► Government by a few, especially by a small faction of persons or families.
► Of the same or similar nature or kind
5. Reciprocal
► Of, relating to, or produced by motion.
► To modify, as by shortening or simplifying or by skewing the content in a certain manner.
► Interchanged, given, or owed to each other.
©2026 Boston Herald in Education and Online Publications Inc. and NIEonline.com
