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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. Pulverize

The branch of biology that deals with animals and animal life, including the study of the structure, physiology, development, and classification of animals.

To pound, crush, or grind to a powder or dust.

Marked by hearty conviviality and good cheer.

A proportional part or share.


2. Renaissance

Conversation between characters in a drama or narrative

A rebirth or revival.

To have a great ambition or ultimate goal

Of, relating to, or occurring in the night


3. Solstice

A movement or procedure involving skill and dexterity.

A very large and destructive wave, generally caused by a tremendous disturbance in the ocean, such as an undersea earthquake or volcanic eruption.

Either of two times of the year when the sun is at its greatest distance from the celestial equator.

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


4. Chronology

A disorderly commotion or disturbance.

The arrangement of events in time

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

Harmful, malevolent, injurious. Harmfully cancerous.


5. Cower

To cringe in fear

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

Having no specific pattern, purpose, or objective.

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


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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.