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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 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. Reparation

Extremely rapid, hasty, or abrupt; precipitate.

Something done or paid to compensate or make amends.

A place or situation regarded as drawing into its center all that surrounds it.

A plane curve formed by the intersection of a right circular cone and a plane parallel to an element of the cone.


2. Kowtow

To show servile deference.

Of or relating to a holding of something in trust for another.

Lacking social polish; tactless.

The side of a right triangle opposite the right angle.


3. Usurp

To insert or introduce between other elements or parts.

To seize another’s place, authority, or possession wrongfully.

Characterized by forcefulness of expression or intensity of emotion or conviction; fervid.

The iron-containing respiratory pigment in red blood cells of vertebrates.


4. Nomenclature

A system of names used in an art or science:

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

A factor that determines a range of variations; a boundary

To make an accusation against.


5. Equinox

Having unlimited or universal power, authority, or force; all-powerful.

Either of two points on the celestial sphere at which the ecliptic intersects the celestial equator.

The science and technology of building electronic circuits and devices from single atoms and molecules.

Shaking and vibration at the surface of the earth resulting from underground movement along a fault plane.


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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.