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. Sacrifice

► One who rejects a religion, cause, allegiance, or group for another; a deserter.

► Forfeiture of something highly valued for the sake of one considered to have a greater value or claim.

► Inspiring awe, admiration, or wonder

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

2. Commemorate

► To honor the memory of with a ceremony

► To have a great ambition or ultimate goal

► Conversation between characters in a drama or narrative

► A disorderly commotion or disturbance.

3. Virtuoso

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

► A preparation of a weakened or killed pathogen.

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

► Harmful, malevolent, injurious. Harmfully cancerous.

4. Jovial

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

► Marked by hearty conviviality and good cheer.

► A rebirth or revival.

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

5. Sect

► An embankment built to prevent flooding

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

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

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

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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.