Words in the News

This Week's Word In The News 

PETITIONER

DEFINITION:
A person who pleads with a governmental institution for a legal remedy or a redress of grievances, through the use of a petition.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
While presenting the citizens’ petition for debate at the April 11 Spring Town Meeting, petitioners argued that ICE operations in Plymouth have “created fear” and “disrupted lives” among the immigrant community, leading to what they call a distrust of local police.
The Boston Herald, 04/20/2026

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. Expurgate

Lacking purpose or vitality; feeble or ineffective.

An advocate of the extension of political voting rights, especially to women.

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

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


2. Wrought

Vanishing or likely to vanish like vapor.

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

Put together; created.

The basic unit of currency among participating European Union countries.


3. Oligarchy

Overbearing pride or presumption; arrogance.

Government by a few, especially by a small faction of persons or families.

Of or relating to money

Shaking and vibration at the surface of the earth resulting from underground movement along a fault plane.


4. Lugubrious

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

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.

A person unduly fearful or contemptuous of that which is foreign, especially of strangers or foreign peoples.

Warlike in manner or temperament; pugnacious.


5. Reciprocal

Warlike in manner or temperament; pugnacious.

To proceed completely around:

Interchanged, given, or owed to each other.

Of the same or similar nature or kind


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.