Words in the News

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

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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. Vertebrate

The act of resting or the state of being at rest.

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

Having a backbone or spinal column.

Being without or almost without hope


2. Quota

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

An unstable, poisonous allotrope of oxygen.

Similarity in some respects between things that are otherwise dissimilar.

A proportional part or share.


3. Marsupial

A weather phenomenon in the Eastern Pacific that is precisely equivalent to a hurricane.

Any of various nonplacental mammals, including kangaroos, opossums, bandicoots, and wombats, found principally in Australia and the Americas.

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

A picture or decorative design made by setting small colored pieces, as of stone or tile, into a surface.


4. Light-Year

In a deplorable state of distress or misfortune; miserable.

Inspiring awe, admiration, or wonder

The distance that light travels in a vacuum in one year.

A very large and destructive wave, generally caused by a tremendous disturbance in the ocean, such as an undersea earthquake or volcanic eruption.


5. Deign

A metric unit of length equal to 1,000 meters (0.62 mile).

Loud, noisy, and lacking in restraint or discipline

To condescend to give or grant

To move back or away from a limit, point, or mark


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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.