limerick

A limerick is a five-line poem that is often humorous.

Limericks use the rhyme scheme AABBA, meaning that the first two lines rhyme with each other, and then the next (usually shorter) two lines rhyme with each other, and the last line rhymes with the first two lines. For example:

A limerick has five lines, not nine.
Start by rhyming two lines real fine.
Then rhyme another two.
It’s pretty easy to do.
Just don’t forget the punch line.

The limerick is a popular form of poetry that’s generally done just for fun, as opposed to being composed for high artistic value. Many children’s nursery rhymes are formatted as limericks. Limericks are also known for being used as a way to tell very raunchy jokes.

The first known uses of the word limerick referring to the poem come from the late 1800s. The name is said to have originated from a kind of party game in which people took turns making up a set of nonsense verses, after which everyone would sing the same refrain, “Will you come up to Limerick?” (Limerick here refers to the county of Limerick in Ireland.)

People were writing and reciting limericks before they were called limericks—at least since the 1700s. The AABBA rhyme scheme that is almost always used today was popularized by poet Edward Lear in his 1846 collection A Book of Nonsense. In most limericks, the third and fourth lines are a rhyming couplet (a two-line rhyming poem whose two lines are usually the same length). These lines are often shorter than the first, second, and fifth lines. (In technical terms, they should have two metrical feet in contrast to the other three lines, which should have three metrical feet.) Here’s a classic example of a limerick that uses this structure:

There once was a man from Nantucket (A)
Who kept all his cash in a bucket. (A)
But his daughter, named Nan, (B)
Ran away with a man (B)
And as for the bucket, Nantucket. (A)

Get it? Nantucket in the final line is a pun meant to be interpreted as Nan took it. It’s common in many limericks for the final rhyme to end with the same word as the first line.

Limericks’ humor usually comes from puns and other kinds of wordplay, or just plain silliness. (Of course, a lot of people use them as an opportunity to make dirty jokes.) Limericks usually follow the traditional pattern, which makes them easy to recite. But they’re usually composed just for fun, and so the form doesn’t need to be perfect. Still, the last line is almost always the punch line.

Many nursery rhymes are actually limericks, or at least very similar in form. For example:

Hickory, dickory, dock
The mouse ran up the clock
The clock struck one,
And down he run
Hickory, dickory, dock!

Limericks are most commonly used as a fun way to tell a silly joke, especially one based on wordplay.

With math, Mrs Johnson could trace
Trajectories spinning through space,
Propelling Apollo
And missions to follow—
Work nobody now can erase.

— Limericking (@Limericking) February 25, 2020

#AuthorConfession day 1: Introduce your WIP with a limerick!

Peter hides himself away.
Damian looks toward a new day.
It all starts out great
But they fear tempting fate.
Will they come out of this okay?

— Jennifer Gitler (@JenniferGitler) March 1, 2020

• poem
• rhyme
• funny
• humorous
• couplet
• stanza
• verse
• doggerel

Which of the following choices is the traditional rhyme scheme for a limerick? 

A. AABBA
B. ABBAA
C. AAABB
D. ABABA