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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.
This Week's Word In The News 

PROPOSITION

DEFINITION:
Something offered for consideration or acceptance.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
proposition 10 was considered a landmark policy.
►The Los Angeles Times, 12/15/2025

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. Kowtow

► To show servile deference.

► Feeling or showing haughty disdain.

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

► Attended by favorable circumstances; propitious.

2. Parabola

► A plane curve formed by the intersection of a right circular cone and a plane parallel to an element of the cone.

► To bring under control; conquer.

► Tumultuous; stormy.

► To certify or attest to (the validity of a signature on a document, for example) as a notary public.

3. Obsequious

► To certify or attest to (the validity of a signature on a document, for example) as a notary public.

► Logical incongruity

► Full of or exhibiting servile compliance; fawning.

► Of or relating to a holding of something in trust for another.

4. Abjure

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

► To renounce under oath; forswear.

► Cheerfully confident; optimistic.

► 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.

5. Nonsectarian

► Not limited to or associated with a particular religious denomination.

► The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.

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

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

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