Words in the News

This Week's Word In The News 

ACQUAINTANCE

DEFINITION:
A person one knows slightly, but who is not a close friend.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
When photographer Peter Turnley was just 20 years old, an acquaintance from the California Office of Economic Opportunity reached out to him with a question.
The Los Angeles Times, 12/01/2025

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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. Nocturnal

Any of various relatively small sailing or motor-driven vessels used for pleasure cruises or racing.

Harmful, malevolent, injurious. Harmfully cancerous.

Of, relating to, or occurring in the night

A relationship of mutual benefit or dependence.


2. Rainforest

A prohibition by a government on certain or all trade with a foreign nation

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

The method or result of concealing personnel or equipment from an enemy by making them appear to be part of the natural surroundings

A dense evergreen forest occupying a tropical region with an annual rainfall of at least 100 inches.


3. Guerrilla

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

A grotesque ornamental figure or projection.

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

Having a backbone or spinal column.


4. Suffrage

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

The right or privilege of voting; franchise.

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

Being without or almost without hope


5. Guru

Grossly offensive to decency or morality.

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

A teacher and guide in spiritual and philosophical matters.

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


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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.