Each week, we scan the latest headlines to spot words in action. From major news stories to pop culture buzz, this feature highlights language as it’s unfolding. Stories about scream clubs, mysterious fossils, and a new way to travel all contributed to the vocabulary from this week’s news.
cathartic
adjective: relating to the purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions
From the headlines: “Scream clubs” around the U.S. are giving frustrated people a chance to get together and vent. The phenomenon started earlier this year in Chicago, where a group of friends began gathering to emit cathartic howls and shrieks on the shore of Lake Michigan. Now more than a dozen cities hold weekly meetings for people to purge themselves of anxiety, grief, fear, anger, and other negative emotions by screaming together.
conundrum
noun: a difficult problem
From the headlines: After nearly 50 years, researchers have finally solved a puzzling conundrum. In 1976, construction workers in Toronto unearthed a caribou-like fossil during excavation for a subway line, leaving experts perplexed about its identity. The animal, thought to be about 11,000 years old and notable for its unusually horizontal antlers, remained a mystery until DNA testing revealed it to be related to both the mule deer and the white-tailed deer.
fisticuffs
noun: a fight with bare clenched hands
From the headlines: A game in which the Kansas City Chiefs defeated the Detroit Lions ended in fisticuffs. As NFL players exchanged handshakes on the field, Lions safety Brian Branch refused to return a high-five from Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes. Kansas City’s JuJu Smith-Schuster shouted at Branch, who shoved him to the ground, triggering a fistfight between members of both teams. Branch was later suspended for starting the brawl.
grotesque
adjective: distorted and unnatural in shape or size
From the headlines: At Northern England’s World Gurning Championships, contestants are judged on “the grotesqueness of the grimace and on the extent to which their facial features change.” The quirky competition honors a tradition going back to the Middle Ages and celebrates the creative skill of contorting one’s face into the most grotesque expression imaginable. Among the top participants, Adrian Zivelonghi is known for twisting his face in such an extreme manner that his lower lip covers his nose while his false teeth press against his cheek.
intrepid
adjective: invulnerable to fear or intimidation
From the headlines: An American teenager has become the youngest person on record to travel solo to 100 countries. Arjun Malaviya reached that milestone at age 17 upon arriving in Nadi, Fiji. The intrepid Californian, who already holds five full passports, began his global journey shortly after graduating high school, venturing alone through crowded cities, remote villages, and far-flung islands around the world.
obsolete
adjective: no longer in general use
From the headlines: Economists Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion, and Peter Howitt jointly received the Nobel Prize in Economics for their research into how technological innovations can revolutionize one era yet become obsolete in the next. Central to their theory is the concept of “creative destruction,” a continuous process in which new inventions replace outdated ones. Aghion and Howitt also devised a mathematical model explaining how businesses can keep expanding even as their own products lose relevance over time.
relic
noun: an object that has survived from the distant past
From the headlines: A German citizen returned an ancient relic to Greece more than 50 years after she stole it in the 1960s. The woman had removed a limestone capital from the top of a 4th-century pillar during a visit to the site of the first Olympic Games. She was inspired to give back the priceless artifact after learning that the University of Münster had recently returned a collection of cultural treasures to their countries of origin.
sea anemone
noun: a sedentary marine animal that resembles a flower
From the headlines: Researchers discovered new details about the relationship between fish and sea anemones. Night photography techniques helped divers observe the flower-like aquatic invertebrates using juvenile filefish, driftfish, and pomfrets as a form of transportation. In turn, the fish appeared to use the sea anemones for self defense, carrying the small, stinging creatures in their mouths apparently to shield themselves from predators.
typhoid
noun: (also called typhoid fever) an infection marked by intestinal inflammation and ulceration
From the headlines: A new campaign in Bangladesh will immunize 50 million children against typhoid. Particular strains of the infectious, life-threatening disease have become resistant to antibiotics in the past decades. The vaccination program aims to protect kids from ever getting infected, as the illness becomes harder to treat with each passing year. About 8,000 Bangladeshis die of typhoid annually.
watershed
adjective: constituting an important point of transition between two phases, conditions, etc.
From the headlines: In what many are calling a watershed moment, a Gaza ceasefire deal resulted in the release of the final 20 Israeli hostages along with nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. The fragile truce has so far held, with both Hamas and the Israeli government also beginning to exchange the bodies of deceased captives. Though the long-term prospects for peace remain uncertain, the agreement marks a significant milestone after two years of conflict.
