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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 

ACCOST

DEFINITION:
To approach and speak to (someone) in an often challenging or aggressive way.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
As their identities became more public, the operators were even accosted in their off hours.
►The Anchorage Daily News, 09/21/2026

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. Chicanery

► Not interesting; dull:

► Deception by trickery or sophistry.

► Playfully jocular; humorous

► To show servile deference.


2. Bowdlerize

► Of the same or similar nature or kind

► The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.

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

► Having a bad disposition; surly.


3. Thermodynamics

► To separate or get rid of (an undesirable part); eliminate.

► Very talkative; garrulous.

► Lacking social polish; tactless.

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


4. Expurgate

► To remove erroneous, vulgar, obscene, or otherwise objectionable material from (a book, for example) before publication.

► The use of obstructionist tactics, especially prolonged speechmaking, for the purpose of delaying legislative action.

► Noninterference in the affairs of others.

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


5. Euro

► The basic unit of currency among participating European Union countries.

► The side of a right triangle opposite the right angle.

► The use of unnecessarily wordy and indirect language.

► Any of numerous natural and synthetic compounds consisting of up to millions of repeated linked units,


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