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. Tumult

► A disorderly commotion or disturbance.

► To have a great ambition or ultimate goal

► The repetition of the same sounds or of the same kinds of sounds at the beginning of words or in stressed syllables

► The supporting and water-conducting tissue of vascular plants, consisting primarily of tracheids and vessels; woody tissue.

2. Deign

► The supporting and water-conducting tissue of vascular plants, consisting primarily of tracheids and vessels; woody tissue.

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

► To condescend to give or grant

► The quality or state of being tranquil; serenity.

3. Cower

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

► To cringe in fear

► A poisonous substance, especially a protein, that is produced by living cells or organisms.

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

4. Decorum

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

► To honor the memory of with a ceremony

► Appropriateness of behavior or conduct

► To abstain from or act together in abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with as an expression of protest or disfavor or as a means of coercion

5. Random

► Something that is passed down from preceding generations; a tradition.

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

► Having no specific pattern, purpose, or objective.

► A characteristic rate or rhythm of activity; a pace

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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.