Words in the News

This Week's Word In The News 

OVERZEALOUS

DEFINITION:
Showing too much energy or enthusiasm in pursuit of a cause or objective.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
Patrolmen’s Association, the city’s largest police union, attributed the encounter to an “overzealous poll worker who was complaining to the officer that the councilor shouldn’t have even been inside.”
The Boston Herald, 11/17/2025

Generate your own quiz
Select a grade level
 Elementary
 Middle School
 High School
Select a quiz type
 By words
 By Definitions
Select how many questions
5   10   15   20  

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. Deleterious

To impress (something) upon the mind of another by frequent instruction or repetition; instill.

To proceed completely around:

Having a harmful effect; injurious.

A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality


2. Bellicose

Warlike in manner or temperament; pugnacious.

Mournful, dismal, or gloomy, especially to an exaggerated or ludicrous degree.

Playfully jocular; humorous

A form of government in which the political authority exercises absolute and centralized control over all aspects of life,


3. Photosynthesis

Playfully jocular; humorous

A form of government in which the political authority exercises absolute and centralized control over all aspects of life,

Put together; created.

The process in green plants and certain other organisms by which carbohydrates are synthesized from carbon dioxide and water using light as an energy source.


4. Hegemony

The iron-containing respiratory pigment in red blood cells of vertebrates.

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

Of the same or similar nature or kind

The predominant influence, as of a state, region, or group, over another or others.


5. Vehement

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

A doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.

Characterized by forcefulness of expression or intensity of emotion or conviction; fervid.

Architectural.


Get more Quizzes 

 Elementary School    Middle School   High School  

 By Word     By Definition    5  10  15  20 Questions

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.