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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 

VERTEBRAE

DEFINITION:
Each of the series of small bones forming the backbone.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
The photographer with The Washington Post who was attacked by Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank so badly that several vertebrae were broken said Sunday she was increasingly angry that Israel’s military seems to protect settlers more than the Palestinians they threaten.
►Associated Press, 10/19/2026

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. Metaphor

► One thing conceived as representing another; a symbol.

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

► An elevated, comparatively level expanse of land; a tableland.

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


2. Hologram

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

► A closed plane figure bounded by three or more line segments.

► One that speaks for, represents, or advocates

► To abstain from or act together in abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with as an expression of protest or disfavor or as a means of coercion


3. Cower

► One that speaks for, represents, or advocates

► To abstain from or act together in abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with as an expression of protest or disfavor or as a means of coercion

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

► To cringe in fear


4. Laconic

► An unstable, poisonous allotrope of oxygen.

► A dense evergreen forest occupying a tropical region with an annual rainfall of at least 100 inches.

► Using or marked by the use of few words; terse or concise.

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


5. Enthusiastic

► A movement or procedure involving skill and dexterity.

► Having or demonstrating enthusiasm

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

► Marked by hearty conviviality and good cheer.


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