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. Omnivore

Harmful, malevolent, injurious. Harmfully cancerous.

A member of an irregular, usually indigenous military or paramilitary unit operating in small bands in occupied territory to harass and undermine the enemy

A state of uncertainty or perplexity.

One that takes in everything available, as with the mind.


2. Mosaic

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

A schedule of prices or fees.

A grotesque ornamental figure or projection.

One that is inconvenient, annoying, or vexatious; a bother.


3. Antibody

One that is inconvenient, annoying, or vexatious; a bother.

A movement or procedure involving skill and dexterity.

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

A drawing consisting of the outline of something, especially a human profile, filled in with a solid color.


4. Formidable

One thing conceived as representing another; a symbol.

Loud, noisy, and lacking in restraint or discipline

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

Inspiring awe, admiration, or wonder


5. Quarantine

A treeless area between the icecap and the tree line of Arctic regions, having a permanently frozen subsoil and supporting low-growing vegetation

An unstable, poisonous allotrope of oxygen.

The act of reasoning from factual knowledge or evidence.

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


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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.