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 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. Hypotenuse

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

► Having unlimited or universal power, authority, or force; all-powerful.

► To picture falsely; misrepresent.

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

2. Deleterious

► Having a harmful effect; injurious.

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

► Overbearing pride or presumption; arrogance.

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

3. Xenophobe

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

► Vanishing or likely to vanish like vapor.

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

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

4. Circumlocution

► The use of unnecessarily wordy and indirect language.

► Clear to the understanding.

► Falling off or shed at a specific season or stage of growth:

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

5. Bellicose

► Falling off or shed at a specific season or stage of growth:

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

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

► Warlike in manner or temperament; pugnacious.

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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.