Words in the News

This Week's Word In The News 

ACQUAINTANCE

DEFINITION:
A person one knows slightly, but who is not a close friend.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
When photographer Peter Turnley was just 20 years old, an acquaintance from the California Office of Economic Opportunity reached out to him with a question.
The Los Angeles Times, 12/01/2025

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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. Light-Year

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

The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness.

The distance that light travels in a vacuum in one year.

To rejoice greatly; be jubilant or triumphant


2. Suffrage

Any of various relatively small sailing or motor-driven vessels used for pleasure cruises or racing.

A very large and destructive wave, generally caused by a tremendous disturbance in the ocean, such as an undersea earthquake or volcanic eruption.

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

The right or privilege of voting; franchise.


3. Malignant

A person with masterly skill or technique in the arts.

An unstable, poisonous allotrope of oxygen.

The locus of points for which the sum of the distances from each point to two fixed points is equal

Harmful, malevolent, injurious. Harmfully cancerous.


4. Sect

A cult or religious movement, a group sharing particular (often unorthodox) political and/or religious beliefs.

A drawing consisting of the outline of something, especially a human profile, filled in with a solid color.

The repetition of the same sounds or of the same kinds of sounds at the beginning of words or in stressed syllables

The act of resting or the state of being at rest.


5. Symbiosis

A poisonous substance, especially a protein, that is produced by living cells or organisms.

A relationship of mutual benefit or dependence.

A diffuse mass of interstellar dust or gas or both, visible as luminous patches or areas of darkness

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.