It's the Word of the Day podcast for March 17th.
Today's word is limerik, spelled L-I-M-E-R-I-C-K.
Limerik is a noun.
It's a humorous, rhyming poem of five lines.
Here's the word used in a sentence from Variety by Rebecca Rubin.
The play is silly, purposefully stupid, and tough for even Cole Escola to categorize.
If I were to call it a farce or a screwball comedy,
I feel like actual scholars of comedy would be like, there's not a single door slam, you idiot.
I would call it a dirty limerick.
They joked to Variety earlier this fall.
A limerick is a short, humorous,
and frequently body five-line poem with a rhyme scheme of A-A-B-B-A.
While the origins of this type of verse are unknown,
some believe that the poem owes its name to a group of poets from Limerick,
a port city in West Central Ireland who wrote such verses.
Others point to a parlor game in which players sang the chorus of an old soldier's song with the phrase,
will you come up to Limerick and then add it impromptu verses.
Regardless, a limerick's characteristic rhythm comes from its use of anapests,
metrical feet consisting of two short syllables followed by one long syllable or two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable,
as in the word unaware.