Words in the News

This Week's Word In The News 

OVERZEALOUS

DEFINITION:
Showing too much energy or enthusiasm in pursuit of a cause or objective.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
Patrolmen’s Association, the city’s largest police union, attributed the encounter to an “overzealous poll worker who was complaining to the officer that the councilor shouldn’t have even been inside.”
The Boston Herald, 11/17/2025

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Words in the News Quiz
5 Middle 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. Ozone

The systematic procedure by which a complex or scientific task is accomplished.

To swing indecisively from one course of action or opinion to another.

An unstable, poisonous allotrope of oxygen.

One that takes in everything available, as with the mind.


2. Guerrilla

Any of various nonplacental mammals, including kangaroos, opossums, bandicoots, and wombats, found principally in Australia and the Americas.

A member of an irregular, usually indigenous military or paramilitary unit operating in small bands in occupied territory to harass and undermine the enemy

The pattern produced on a photosensitive medium that has been exposed by holography and then photographically developed.

A metric unit of length equal to 1,000 meters (0.62 mile).


3. Tundra

The supporting and water-conducting tissue of vascular plants, consisting primarily of tracheids and vessels; woody tissue.

A treeless area between the icecap and the tree line of Arctic regions, having a permanently frozen subsoil and supporting low-growing vegetation

Self-examination.

A grotesque ornamental figure or projection.


4. Malignant

Harmful, malevolent, injurious. Harmfully cancerous.

A Y-shaped protein on the surface of B cells that is secreted into the blood or lymph in response to an antigenic stimulus

The distribution of energy emitted by a radiant source, arranged in order of wavelengths.

Something that is passed down from preceding generations; a tradition.


5. Fallacy

Something that is passed down from preceding generations; a tradition.

Conversation between characters in a drama or narrative

Incorrectness of reasoning or belief

Similarity in some respects between things that are otherwise dissimilar.


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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.