Words in the News

This Week's Word In The News 

INCARCERATED

DEFINITION:
Confined in a jail or prison.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is restricting access to rehabilitative programming for incarcerated people as it clamps down on overtime spending before the end of its financial year.
►The Los Angeles Times, 06/29/2026

Generate your own quiz
Select a grade level
 Elementary
 Middle School
 High School
Select a quiz type
 By words
 By Definitions
Select how many questions
5   10   15   20  

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. Oligarchy

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

► A temple tower of the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians, having the form of a terraced pyramid of successively receding stories.

► Overbearing pride or presumption; arrogance.

► Interchanged, given, or owed to each other.

2. Irony

► Interchanged, given, or owed to each other.

► 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.

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

► Of or relating to money

3. Obsequious

► To divide (a geographic area) into voting districts so as to give unfair advantage to one party in elections.

► Full of or exhibiting servile compliance; fawning.

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

► Impossible to dispute; unquestionable

4. Hypotenuse

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

► A marked change in appearance, character, condition, or function.

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

► To insert or introduce between other elements or parts.

5. Notarize

► To insert or introduce between other elements or parts.

► Deception by trickery or sophistry.

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

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

Get more Quizzes 

 Elementary School    Middle School   High School  

 By Word     By Definition    5  10  15  20 Questions

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.