Entertainment / Literature / Limerick: A five-line closed-form poem in which the first two lines consist of anapestic trimeter, which in turn are followed by lines of anapestic dimeter, and a final line in trimeter. They rhyme in an AABBA pattern. Typically, they are used in comic or bawdy verse, making extensive use of double entendre. Here is an example typical of the metrical and linear arrangement: A student from dear old Bryn Mawr, Committed a dreadful faux pas, She loosened a stay, In her new d???©collet???©, Exposing her je ne sais quoi. The limerick first gained popularity in the 18th century. The first originator is unknown, but many give credit to a group of poets who lived in the town of Croom in County Limerick called the Fili na Maighe (Gaelic poets of the Maigue') who were renowned for their quick wit and sardonic style. An alternative legend is that the limerick arose from an 18th century rivalry between the poetic publican Sean O'Tuama and his friend Andrias maccraith. The two had a spectacular falling out, and wrote a series of insulting verses about each other, which according to legend, started the tradition of the limerick.
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Lifestyle / Poetry / Light Verse: Whimsical, amusing poems such as limericks, nonsense poems, and double dactyls, practised by such as robert herrick, tom hood, charles stuart calverley, edward lear, lewis carroll, gelett burgess, fre MORE
Lifestyle / Poetry / Quintain: A five-line stanza, such as a limerick or edmund waller's 'go lovely rose.' also called a cinquain. MORE
Lifestyle / Poetry / Poulters Measure: Couplets in which a twelve-syllable line rhymes with a fourteen-syllable line. Chapman uses this form in his translation of homer. Hymn writers split the couplet into a quatrain (6 6 8 6), as did ball MORE