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Words in the News

This Week's Word In The News 

ADVERSE

DEFINITION:
Having a negative or harmful effect on something.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
There was no evidence of “any adverse or harmful chemical or other exposures,” he wrote.
The Boston Herald, 06/15/2026

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Words in the News Quiz
5 High 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. Thermodynamics

Government by a few, especially by a small faction of persons or families.

Physics that deals with the relationships and conversions between heat and other forms of energy.

Extremely rapid, hasty, or abrupt; precipitate.

The basic unit of currency among participating European Union countries.


2. Temblor

The iron-containing respiratory pigment in red blood cells of vertebrates.

Shaking and vibration at the surface of the earth resulting from underground movement along a fault plane.

Not limited to or associated with a particular religious denomination.

Something done or paid to compensate or make amends.


3. Vacuous

An extremely distant, and thus old, celestial object whose power output is several thousand times that of our entire galaxy.

Lacking serious purpose or occupation; idle.

A person unduly fearful or contemptuous of that which is foreign, especially of strangers or foreign peoples.

A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality


4. Deleterious

Overbearing pride or presumption; arrogance.

To divide (a geographic area) into voting districts so as to give unfair advantage to one party in elections.

Having a harmful effect; injurious.

Clear to the understanding.


5. Enervate

A dramatic or literary form of discourse in which a character talks to himself or herself or reveals his or her thoughts without addressing a listener.

To weaken or destroy the strength or vitality of.

A doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.

The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.


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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.