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. Omnivore

► Loud, noisy, and lacking in restraint or discipline

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

► A relationship of mutual benefit or dependence.

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

2. Plateau

► To condescend to give or grant

► The systematic procedure by which a complex or scientific task is accomplished.

► An elevated, comparatively level expanse of land; a tableland.

► A person with masterly skill or technique in the arts.

3. Embargo

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

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

► A disorderly commotion or disturbance.

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

4. Maneuver

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

► Consuming or eager to consume great amounts of food; ravenous.

► To swing indecisively from one course of action or opinion to another.

► A movement or procedure involving skill and dexterity.

5. Rainforest

► 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.

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

► A form of a verb that in some languages, such as English, can function independently as an adjective.

► The drawing of a conclusion by reasoning; the act of deducing.

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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.