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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 

FOOTHOLD

DEFINITION:
A position usable as a base for further advance.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
Growing national anxiety over the impact of massive data centers on communities has found a foothold in Greater Boston in the form of Markley’s Lowell location.
The Boston Herald, 08/10/2026

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. Facetious

A marked change in appearance, character, condition, or function.

To picture falsely; misrepresent.

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

Playfully jocular; humorous


2. Enervate

To increase the positive charge or valence of (an element) by removing electrons.

Very talkative; garrulous.

Full of or exhibiting servile compliance; fawning.

To weaken or destroy the strength or vitality of.


3. Infrastructure

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

Division into ordered groups or categories.

An underlying base or foundation especially for an organization or system.

A system of names used in an art or science:


4. Precipitous

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

Physics that deals with the relationships and conversions between heat and other forms of energy.

Extremely rapid, hasty, or abrupt; precipitate.

Cheerfully confident; optimistic.


5. Gamete

Not interesting; dull:

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.

Lacking purpose or vitality; feeble or ineffective.

Overbearing pride or presumption; arrogance.


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