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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 

FOOTHOLD

DEFINITION:
A position usable as a base for further advance.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
Growing national anxiety over the impact of massive data centers on communities has found a foothold in Greater Boston in the form of Markley’s Lowell location.
The Boston Herald, 08/10/2026

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. Reciprocal

A factor that determines a range of variations; a boundary

Division into ordered groups or categories.

Interchanged, given, or owed to each other.

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


2. Facetious

To endow with the rights of citizenship, especially the right to vote.

A product of disintegration, destruction, or wearing away; debris.

Characterized by affected, exaggerated, or insincere earnestness.

Playfully jocular; humorous


3. Kowtow

To show servile deference.

An extremely distant, and thus old, celestial object whose power output is several thousand times that of our entire galaxy.

To increase the positive charge or valence of (an element) by removing electrons.

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


4. Nonsectarian

Not limited to or associated with a particular religious denomination.

Of, relating to, or produced by motion.

Physics that deals with the relationships and conversions between heat and other forms of energy.

Lacking purpose or vitality; feeble or ineffective.


5. Ziggurat

A temple tower of the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians, having the form of a terraced pyramid of successively receding stories.

An underlying base or foundation especially for an organization or system.

A stock of terms used in a particular profession, subject, or style; a vocabulary:

To divide (a geographic area) into voting districts so as to give unfair advantage to one party in elections.


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