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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 

OVERZEALOUS

DEFINITION:
Showing too much energy or enthusiasm in pursuit of a cause or objective.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
Patrolmen’s Association, the city’s largest police union, attributed the encounter to an “overzealous poll worker who was complaining to the officer that the councilor shouldn’t have even been inside.”
The Boston Herald, 11/17/2025

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. Despondent

A characteristic rate or rhythm of activity; a pace

An embankment built to prevent flooding

Being without or almost without hope

The pattern produced on a photosensitive medium that has been exposed by holography and then photographically developed.


2. Protagonist

An ammunition belt, worn over the shoulder, having loops or pockets for cartridges.

To cringe in fear

Of or relating to the range of invisible radiation wavelengths from about 4 nanometers, on the border of the x-ray region, to about 380 nanometers, just beyond the violet in the visible spectrum.

The main character in a drama or other literary work.


3. Maneuver

Selecting or employing individual elements from a variety of sources, systems, or styles

Enforced isolation or restriction of free movement imposed to prevent the spread of contagious disease.

A movement or procedure involving skill and dexterity.

The food-conducting tissue of vascular plants, consisting of sieve tubes, fibers, parenchyma, and sclereids.


4. Quota

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

Either of two times of the year when the sun is at its greatest distance from the celestial equator.

To rejoice greatly; be jubilant or triumphant

A proportional part or share.


5. Stereotype

A conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image.

To abstain from or act together in abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with as an expression of protest or disfavor or as a means of coercion

Using or marked by the use of few words; terse or concise.

An intricate structure of interconnecting passages through which it is difficult to find one’s way; a maze.


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