Limerick

Definition: The limerick, whose name comes from the town in Ireland, is a five-line joke of a poem -- witty, usually involving place names & puns, and most often bawdy, sometimes unprintable. A limerick is constructed of anapests, the metrical foot consisting of two unaccented or short syllables followed by one stressed or long syllable: da-da-dum. The first two lines are three anapests, the second two are two anapests, and the last line is three, the whole poem rhymed aabba. Edward Lear is the best known of limerick writers, and some say he invented the form, but there are many anonymous limericks that date back further than Lear’s time (the 19th century).