Is Chris Christie a "Miscreant"? A Quick Current Events Vocab Quiz

This week's news was dominated in the US by Chris Christie's bridge-closing scandal, which allowed words like miscreant and reprehensible to get some air. These are strong words you don't see often. Generally, a miscreant's the lowest of the low. Think: stealing from your grandmother.

As with miscreant, reprehensible is very strong. Save it for shutting down a city on the first day of school; it's not about double dipping bread sticks or telling white lies to friends.

With Republicans attacking Democrats vulnerable for their support of Obamacare, onslaught, a term for a military "attack," should bring to mind not an enemy army hurtling toward you on the field of battle, but a night spent watching negative political ads. Which is maybe worse?

The outing of the U.S. National Security Agency's surreptitiously--which means "secretively" or "sneakily"--implanting transmitters into computers around the world as part of a cyber-attack launch pad sounds like something straight out of a John le Carré novel. To understand how very real it is, you need to be up on the definition of surreptitious, or at least know that it doesn't mean "with the owner's consent."

Remember unwitting, as in peoples whose computers are being monitored by the NSA, by keeping in mind that wit means intelligence or humor. Unwitting means "not aware." It carries a connotation of innocence, too. Unlike ignorant, which can make a victim sound like they're just poorly-informed, being unwitting is not about what you know. It's about what you notice.

The fact that software implanted inside a computer to work against the user is called "malicious software" should come as no surprise. Malicious means "bad" but unlike reprehensible (above), it refers to the evil nature of a thing, not its judgment by society.

With the Obama administration retreating from a defense of proposed environmental regulation in the 12-nation negotiations for a Pacific Trade Agreement, contentious is a good word to know. It describes quarrelsome people, or issues people tend to quarrel over, and here sheds light on why the U.S. is losing the fight for environmental regulation in the region.

As with contentious, rift's a fighting word. It refers to the divide between two people--the kind that often comes after they've had a fight--that resembles a fissure or wide crack in rock and the resulting chasm that cannot be crossed.

Wondering how reporters became aware that the Obama administration is leaving aside the environment in Pacific Trade Agreement negotiations? You'll need to know that the word omit means to leave out, which is precisely what the latest draft of an agreement has done with U.S.-proposed environmental regulations.

By ruling that Internet providers ought to be able to pay more for more bandwidth, the U.S. appeals court is challenging the concept of "net neutrality," which suggests that all providers have access to the same means of delivery. In other words, they'd start out on an equal or neutral playing field.