Words in the News

This Week's Word In The News 

WILDFIRE

DEFINITION:
An unplanned and uncontrolled fire in an area of combustible vegetation.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
It was not yet clear how the wildfires started, but a long drought, low humidity and strong winds were fueling them.
The Key West Citizen, 04/27/2026

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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. Malignant

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

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

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

Harmful, malevolent, injurious. Harmfully cancerous.


2. Technique

The systematic procedure by which a complex or scientific task is accomplished.

Strikingly unconventional and far-fetched in style or appearance; odd

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

A movement or procedure involving skill and dexterity.


3. Mosaic

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

A movement or procedure involving skill and dexterity.

Conversation between characters in a drama or narrative

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


4. Salmonella

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

To have a great ambition or ultimate goal

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

Any of several rod-shaped bacteria, of the genus Salmonella, that cause food poisoning and other diseases.


5. Tariff

Having a buoyant or self-confident air; brisk.

An ammunition belt, worn over the shoulder, having loops or pockets for cartridges.

An unstable, poisonous allotrope of oxygen.

A schedule of prices or fees.


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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.