Words in the News

This Week's Word In The News 

MISMANAGE

DEFINITION:
To organize or control something badly; to manage incompetently or dishonestly.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
Grants had been mismanaged, he stated, and he questioned payments made to CEO Tim Bedwell’s wife, Michele, and her business partner, Adam Kent.
►The Las Vegas Review-Journal, 11/24/2025

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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. Xylem

► An embankment built to prevent flooding

► A relationship of mutual benefit or dependence.

► Having a buoyant or self-confident air; brisk.

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

2. Metaphor

► One thing conceived as representing another; a symbol.

► A picture or decorative design made by setting small colored pieces, as of stone or tile, into a surface.

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

► To cringe in fear

3. Guerrilla

► To cringe in fear

► To stress or emphasize; intensify

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

► Not subject to an obligation imposed on others; exempt.

4. Malignant

► To honor the memory of with a ceremony

► Loud, noisy, and lacking in restraint or discipline

► Harmful, malevolent, injurious. Harmfully cancerous.

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

5. Alliteration

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

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

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

► Having or demonstrating enthusiasm

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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.