A limerick is a five-line poem with a strict meter, popularized by Edward Lear and Charlie Murphy. The rhyme scheme is usually "A-A-B-B-A", with a rather rigid meter. The first, second, and fifth lines are three metrical feet; the third and fourth two metrical feet. The foot used is usually the amphibrach, a stressed syllable between two unstressed ones. However, it can be considered a anapestic foot, two short syllables and then a long, the reverse of dactyl rhythm. However, many substitutions are common.

The first line traditionally introduces a person and a location, and usually ends with the name of the location, though sometimes with that of the person. A true limerick is supposed to have a kind of twist to it. This may lie in the final line, or it may lie in the way the rhymes are often intentionally tortured, or in both. Though not a strict requirement, many limericks are usually those that additionally show some form of internal rhyme, often alliteration, sometimes assonance or another form of rhyme.

Indecent subjects are a recurring theme of many limericks. The less innocent limericks are often considered among the best and the most common:

The limerick packs laughs anatomical

Into space that is quite economical.

But the good ones I've seen

So seldom are clean

And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

-- Vyvyan Holland

Creating new limericks is a popular "drinking game" amongst English-speaking sailors, and as such, those with a ribald theme can be the most amusing. Here's one famous example.

On the breast of a barmaid named Gail,

Were tattoo'd the prices of ale.

And on her behind,

for the sake of the blind,

was the same, but written in Braille.

This one was spoken by Peter Sellers in the film The Magic Christian:

There was a young lady from Exeter

And all the young men threw their sex at 'er

Just to be rude

She lay in the nude

While her parrot, a pervert, took pecks at 'er

The mythopoeic "man from Nantucket" is also a recurring theme in limericks. For example:

There once was a man from Nantucket

Who kept all his cash in a bucket.

But his daughter, named Nan,

Ran away with a man

And as for the bucket, Nantucket.

This literary trope can be attributed to the many whalers who once lived on Nantucket and the popularity of the limerick genre in whaling culture.

More typically than the above example, however, "man from Nantucket" limericks portray him as a sexually perverse and hypersexual persona.

It has thus been suggested that the popularity of "Nantucket" in limericks stems from the possibility to rhyme it with a number of obscenities.

Similarly Uttoxeter and Exeter have been used as the inspiration for hundreds of limericks:

There was a fair maiden of Exeter,

So pretty that guys craned their necks at her.

One was even so brave

as to take out and wave

The distinguishing mark of his sex at her.

--Amy McMahon

The limerick is often spelled to make the ending match in orthography as well as pronunciation, especially when the spelling of one of the words is bizarre:

There was a young curate of Salisbury

Whose manners were quite Halisbury-Scalisbury

He wandered round Hampshire

Without any pampshire

Till the Vicar compelled him to Walisbury

Note: Salisbury was once known as Sarum, and Hampshire is often abbreviated as Hants, giving:

There was a young curate of Sarum

Whose manners were quite harem-scarem (Halisbury-Scalisbury)

He wandered round Hants (Hampshire)

Without any pants (pampshire)

Till the Vicar compelled him to Wear'em (Walisbury)

By further contortion, this can even be extended to the beginning:

A bdellium bdiamond of beauty

Was bdisplayed in a shop in Bdjibouti.

I bought it, then came

A bdelicate bdame

I'm her suitor now, and she my suitee.

The idiosyncratic link between spelling and pronunciation in the English language is also explored in this Scottish example. Bear in mind that the name 'Menzies' is pronounced /ˈmɪŋɪs/:

A lively young damsel named Menzies

Inquired: "Do you know what this thenzies?"

Her aunt, with a gasp,

Replied: "It's a wasp,

And you're holding the end where the stenzies."

There is also this Welsh example:

A Welshman from old Aberystwyth

Had a mistress he'd frequently trystwyth.

Till his mortified wife

Took a large carving-knife

And she sliced off the bit that he pystwyth.

(from MacIntyre's Improbable Bestiary by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre)

There are also limericks that imitate the style/character(of writing, of talking .etc.) of the people(usually well-known people like authors, poets.etc.) they are referring to. For example:

The great poet, John Donne,

Was wont to admonish the Sunne,

"You busie old foole,

lie still and keep coole,

For i am in bed, having funne."

A mathematician named Bath

Let x equal half that he hath.

He gave away y

Then sat down to pi

And choked. What a sad aftermath.

Note the use of pi and aftermath.

A minor league pitcher, McDowell

Pitched an egg at a batter named Owl.

They cried "Get a hit!"

But it hatched in the mitt

And the umpire called it a fowl.

Again, this is a play on a foul ball in baseball, replaced with fowl, or more commonly known as a bird

There once was a man dressed in black

His victims he stretched on a rack

With their every breath

Right up 'till their death

They begged him to give them some slack.

Note "slack" has double meaning with the tightness of the cords and giving them a break.

There is a sub-genre of poems that take the twist of the Limerick and apply it to the Limerick itself. These are sometimes called anti-limericks.

Some lead the listener into expectation of a rhyme, often indecent, which actually is not used.

There was a young lady from Bude

Who went for a swim in the lake

A man in a punt

Stuck an oar in her ear

And said "You can't swim here, it's private."

Or,

There once was an athlete of Venice

Who liked to play matches of tennis

When a ball hit him hard

He went to a ward

Where a doctor did cut off his foot.

Another limerick, attributed to W. S. Gilbert, replaces the rhyme with association:

There was a young man of St Bees

Who was stung in the arm by a wasp

They asked, "Does it hurt?"

He replied, "No it doesn't"

I'm glad that it wasn't a hornet ^[1]

Others subvert the structure of the true limerick.

There was a young man from Japan

Whose limericks never would scan.

When asked why this was,

He answered 'because

I always try to fit as many syllables into the last line as ever possibly I can.'

Similarly,

A decrepit old gas man named Peter,

While hunting around for the meter,

Touched a leak with his light.

He arose out of sight,

And, as anyone can see by reading this, he also destroyed the meter.

And,

A limerick fan from Australia

Regarded his work as a failure:

His verses were fine

Until the fourth line.

Similarly,

There was a young man named Wyatt

Who was extremely quiet

And then one day

He faded away

And,

There once was a man from the sticks

Who liked to compose limericks.

But he failed at the sport,

For he wrote 'em too short.

This is taken a stage further by this pair of verses:

There was a young man of Arnoux

Whose limericks stopped at line two

...and by extension...

There was a young man of Verdun

...which if completed would be a self-contradiction.

A third example would be the limerick about the young man from Saint Paul, which would be self-contradictory if it were told at all.

Although limericks have been written in a great number of different languages, many of these suffer from the fact that the meter of the limerick does not adapt well to such languages as, for example, French or Latin. Good limericks can be written in languages that have a similar natural rhythm to English.

The following example is in Icelandic:

Þegar líkið er glaseygt, svo glampar í,

og í görnum er eitthvað, sem skvampar í,

enda nefbroddur rauður

-- þá er dóninn ei dauður --

heldur drekkur hann of mikið Campari.

A French example, from 1715:

On s'étonne ici que Caliste

Ait pris l'habit de Moliniste

Puisque cette jeune beauté

Ote à chacun sa liberté

N'est-ce pas une Janseniste?

And another French example:

Y avait un jeune homme de Dijon

Qui se foutait de toute religion.

Il a dit, "Quant à moi,

Je déteste les trois:

Le Père, et le Fils, et le Pigeon."

An example in Swedish, attributed to Hans Alfredson:

Det var en ung dam ifrån Gränna

som stjärten så hårt kunde spänna

att hon i detta hål

kunde strypa en ål

och till och med vässa en penna

(There was a young lady from Gränna / who her butt so hard could strain / that she in this hole / could strangle an eel / and even sharpen a pencil)

An example in Esperanto from Raymond Schwartz:

Jen estis fraŭlin' en Parizo;

ŝi dormis sen noktoĉemizo,

feliĉe ŝi havis

- Kaj tio min ravis -

piĵamon en mia valizo.

(There was a miss in Paris/she slept without a nightshirt/happily she has/and that delighted me/ pyjamas in my valise)

The dodoitsu is a short sometimes comic Japanese poem known as a Japanese limerick.

John O'Mill wrote several well-known limericks in Dutch, or in an intentional garble of Dutch and English, such as:

A terrible infant called Peter

Sprinkled his bed with a gheter gieter = watering can

His father got woost woest = angry

Took hold of a knoost knoest = tree branch

And gave him a pack on his meter Dutch saying meaning 'to spank'

And there is a Latin limerick, viz.:

Prope mare erat tubulator

Qui virginem ingrediebatur

"Desine ingressus,

Audivi progressus!"

"Est mihi," inquit tubulator.

which is a passable rendition, in spirit at least, of

A plumber of Sault-Ste.-Marie

Was plumbing a girl by the sea

Said she, "Stop your plumbing,

"There's somebody coming!"

Said the plumber, still plumbing, "It's me."

A Finnish language limerick, describing the dangers of unhealthy food, has been written by Susanna Viljanen:

Oli tyttönen nimeltään Ulla

jolle kelpasi pelkästään pulla

Ei koskaan porkkanan naatti

- vain nopea hiilihydraatti -

Siit' taisi hän lihavaksi tulla

which she herself has rendered:

Ulla was name of girl young

who'd eat just nothing but bun

Never carrot she ate

- just fast carbohydrate -

in the end overweight she had gone

• Clerihew
• Limerick (song)

Limericks Online:

• The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form (OEDILF)
• Limerick Savant Limerick news summaries
• Newsmericks News and views in Limerick form
• Limericks by famous people
• Limericks by Richard Long
• Lear's Limericks retold A curious attempt to "provide some of Mr Lear's limericks with a little more punch in their final lines."
• Rude and Tasteless Limericks Warning - has pornographic images on this linked page
• Limericks for no particular occasion
• The History of Sixteen Wonderful Old Women
• Jarmo's TOAD (Topical Odes Almost Daily) Satirical limericks on the headlines of the day (UK-based)
• Jarmo's FROG (Fairly Random Odes Generally) Original limericks both crude and cerebral
• Limerick-Queen (in German and partly in English) Huge amount of limericks in good quality
• Violent Limericks
• God of Limericks Free Daily Limericks
• Rude Limericks A page of example limericks including some 'Man From Nantucket...' ones.
• alt.jokes.limericks (AJL), a bawdy Usenet Limerick group
• March Madness Limericks

Books available from Gutenberg:

• A book of nonsense