Words in the News

This Week's Word In The News 

RESPIRATORY

DEFINITION:
Relating to breathing.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
They weren’t warned to wear respiratory and other personal protection because the burning composite materials from the F-35 stealth fighter were releasing potentially harmful airborne particles and fibers, according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque.
►The Albuquerque Journal, 03/30/2026

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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. Contradiction

► Lacking serious purpose or occupation; idle.

► Attended by favorable circumstances; propitious.

► Logical incongruity

► The process in cell division by which the nucleus divides.

2. Vortex

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

► Lacking purpose or vitality; feeble or ineffective.

► Belonging to the period before a war, especially the American Civil War.

► Cheerfully confident; optimistic.

3. Soliloquy

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

► 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.

► Lacking social polish; tactless.

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

4. Tautology

► Division into ordered groups or categories.

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

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

► Lacking or marked by a lack of self-confidence; shy and timid.

5. Nadir

► The lowest point

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

► Feeling or showing haughty disdain.

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

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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.