b = word in (wordList[0], wordList[2], wordList[3], wordList[4])
from itertools import chain, islice
b = word in chain(islice(wordList, None, 1), islice(wordList, 2, None))
from itertools import chain
words = frozenset(chain(wordList[:1], wordList[2:]))
b = word in words
Python проверяет, находится ли слово в определенных элементах списка