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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 

FOOTHOLD

DEFINITION:
A position usable as a base for further advance.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
Growing national anxiety over the impact of massive data centers on communities has found a foothold in Greater Boston in the form of Markley’s Lowell location.
The Boston Herald, 08/10/2026

Words in the News Quiz
5 Middle 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. Polygon

The science and art of using all the forces of a nation to execute approved plans as effectively as possible during peace or war.

A cult or religious movement, a group sharing particular (often unorthodox) political and/or religious beliefs.

The main character in a drama or other literary work.

A closed plane figure bounded by three or more line segments.


2. Salmonella

An alteration or change, as in nature, form, or quality.

To honor the memory of with a ceremony

A Y-shaped protein on the surface of B cells that is secreted into the blood or lymph in response to an antigenic stimulus

Any of several rod-shaped bacteria, of the genus Salmonella, that cause food poisoning and other diseases.


3. Gargoyle

A movement or procedure involving skill and dexterity.

The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness.

A schedule of prices or fees.

A grotesque ornamental figure or projection.


4. Vaccine

To proclaim publicly

A diffuse mass of interstellar dust or gas or both, visible as luminous patches or areas of darkness

A preparation of a weakened or killed pathogen.

A person authorized to act as representative for another; a deputy.


5. Hieroglyphic

Something that is passed down from preceding generations; a tradition.

The locus of points for which the sum of the distances from each point to two fixed points is equal

Relating to a system of writing, such as that of ancient Egypt, in which pictorial symbols are used to represent meaning or sounds or a combination of meaning and sound.

The systematic procedure by which a complex or scientific task is accomplished.


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