Words in the News

This Week's Word In The News 

ARID

DEFINITION:
Being without moisture; extremely dry; parched.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
The unpredictability of illegal fireworks make them dangerous in the arid desert climate, said Riddle, who is also bureau commander of Metro’s Northeast Area Command.
►The Las Vegas Review-Journal, 06/30/2025

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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. Supercilious

► The act or process of inhaling and exhaling; breathing.

► Feeling or showing haughty disdain.

► 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.

► Warlike in manner or temperament; pugnacious.

2. Irony

► To insert or introduce between other elements or parts.

► A part, portion, or share.

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

► To repeat in concise form. To make a summary.

3. Infrastructure

► Lacking serious purpose or occupation; idle.

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

► Any of numerous natural and synthetic compounds consisting of up to millions of repeated linked units,

► An underlying base or foundation especially for an organization or system.

4. Inculcate

► To certify or attest to (the validity of a signature on a document, for example) as a notary public.

► To impress (something) upon the mind of another by frequent instruction or repetition; instill.

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

► A factor that determines a range of variations; a boundary

5. Contradiction

► Not interesting; dull:

► Mournful, dismal, or gloomy, especially to an exaggerated or ludicrous degree.

► Logical incongruity

► Clear to the understanding.

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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.