limerick, n. [Said to be from a song with the same verse construction, current in Ireland, the refrain of which contains the place name Limerick.].

A humorous, often nonsensical, and sometimes risqé poem of five anapestic lines, of which lines 1, 2, and 5 are of three feet, and rhyme, and lines 3 and 4 are of two feet, and rhyme.

"There was a young lady, Amanda,
Whose Ballades Lyriques were quite fin de
Si, I deem
But her Journal Intime
Was what sent her papa to Uganda." [Webster 1913 Suppl.]

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OXFORD DICTIONARY

limerick, n. a humorous or comic form of five-line stanza with a rhyme-scheme aabba.

Etymology

said to be from the chorus 'will you come up to Limerick?' sung between improvised verses at a gathering: f. Limerick in Ireland

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THESAURUS

limerick

English sonnet, Horatian ode, Italian sonnet, Petrarchan sonnet, Pindaric ode, Sapphic ode, Shakespearean sonnet, alba, anacreontic, balada, ballad, ballade, bucolic, canso, chanson, clerihew, dirge, dithyramb, eclogue, elegy, epic, epigram, epithalamium, epode, epopee, epopoeia, epos, georgic, ghazel, haiku, idyll, jingle, lyric, madrigal, monody, narrative poem, nursery rhyme, ode, palinode, pastoral, pastoral elegy, pastorela, pastourelle, poem, prothalamium, rhyme, rondeau, rondel, roundel, roundelay, satire, sestina, sloka, song, sonnet, sonnet sequence, tanka, tenso, tenzone, threnody, triolet, troubadour poem, verse, verselet, versicle, villanelle, virelay

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