Words in the News

This Week's Word In The News 

BACKLOT

DEFINITION:
An area behind or adjoining a movie studio containing permanent exterior buildings for outdoor scenes in filmmaking or television productions.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who serves the 4th District, makes her way across an empty, unnamed backlot, presenting her case to be the city’s next mayor.
The Los Angeles Times, 05/18/2026

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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. Impeach

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

To make an accusation against.

Cheerfully confident; optimistic.

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


2. Acumen

Quickness, accuracy, and keenness of judgment or insight.

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

Needless repetition of the same sense in different words; redundancy.

Clear to the understanding.


3. Quasar

Needless repetition of the same sense in different words; redundancy.

Clear to the understanding.

A dramatic or literary form of discourse in which a character talks to himself or herself or reveals his or her thoughts without addressing a listener.

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


4. Plasma

To repeat in concise form. To make a summary.

To seize another’s place, authority, or possession wrongfully.

Vanishing or likely to vanish like vapor.

The clear, yellowish fluid portion of blood, lymph, or intramuscular fluid in which cells are suspended.


5. Obsequious

Of or relating to money

The side of a right triangle opposite the right angle.

A circular strand of DNA in bacteria that contains the hereditary information necessary for cell life.

Full of or exhibiting servile compliance; fawning.


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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.