Limerick:

A limerick is a short, humorous poem with five lines, with a distinct rhythm and rhyme style. It is a type of nonsense verse with a definite pattern: a five-line STANZA rhyming aabba in which lines one, two, and five have their anapestic feet and lines three and four have two anapestic feet. The origin of the limerick is uncertain. It first appeared in print with the publication of Anecdotes and Adventures of Fifteen Young Ladies and History of sixteen Wonderful Old Women in 1820. Still, they were popularized by Edward Lear and his book of Nonsense in 1846. During the early twentieth century, especially in America, the improvisation of limericks became a popular parlor game.

Limericks are often witty or nonsensical and are popular in children’s literature and light verse. An example is given below:

Limericks

By Edward Lear

A Book of  Nonsense (1846)

There was an Old Man with a beard,       a

Who said, “It is just as I feared! -              a

Two Owls and a Hen,                                     b

Four Larks and a Wren,                                 b

Have all built their nests in my beard.     a

.........

                                                       There was a young man from Dealing       c

Who caught the bus for Ealing?    c

It said on the door,                   d

Don’t spit on the floor      d

So he jumped up and spat on the ceiling.  c

........

There was an old Man of the Isles, e

whose face was pervaded with smiles, e

He sang high dum diddle,      f

And played on the fiddle,     f

That amiable Man of the Isles.   e