Words in the News

This Week's Word In The News 

TESTY

DEFINITION:
Marked by impatience or ill humor.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
Unions representing sheriff’s deputies, firefighters and lifeguards made a public pitch Thursday for more support in increasingly testy contract negotiations, releasing a half-hour documentary that highlighted their members’ harrowing tales from the first days of the fires.
►The Los Angeles Times, 04/28/2025

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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. Acumen

► To renounce under oath; forswear.

► Vanishing or likely to vanish like vapor.

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

► Quickness, accuracy, and keenness of judgment or insight.

2. Obsequious

► Cheerfully confident; optimistic.

► Either of two points on the celestial sphere at which the ecliptic intersects the celestial equator.

► 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.

► Full of or exhibiting servile compliance; fawning.

3. Fiduciary

► The predominant influence, as of a state, region, or group, over another or others.

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

► Impossible to dispute; unquestionable

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

4. Expurgate

► Warlike in manner or temperament; pugnacious.

► Very talkative; garrulous.

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

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

5. Oxidize

► A factor that determines a range of variations; a boundary

► To increase the positive charge or valence of (an element) by removing electrons.

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

► The act or process of inhaling and exhaling; breathing.

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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.