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. Participle

A movement or procedure involving skill and dexterity.

A form of a verb that in some languages, such as English, can function independently as an adjective.

The branch of biology that deals with animals and animal life, including the study of the structure, physiology, development, and classification of animals.

A schedule of prices or fees.


2. Commemorate

A prohibition by a government on certain or all trade with a foreign nation

To honor the memory of with a ceremony

The arrangement of events in time

To pound, crush, or grind to a powder or dust.


3. Outrageous

The food-conducting tissue of vascular plants, consisting of sieve tubes, fibers, parenchyma, and sclereids.

Grossly offensive to decency or morality.

An embankment built to prevent flooding

To move back or away from a limit, point, or mark


4. Alliteration

To cringe in fear

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

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

To stress or emphasize; intensify


5. Formidable

One that is inconvenient, annoying, or vexatious; a bother.

A conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image.

Having a buoyant or self-confident air; brisk.

Inspiring awe, admiration, or wonder


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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.