Poetic Terms Dictionary
Poetic Form

Clerihew

Invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1890). A comic miniature form; the person's name always appears in the first line.

Definition

A humorous four-line biographical verse about a named person, rhyming AABB with deliberately irregular metre.

Example

'Sir Humphry Davy / Abominated gravy. / He lived in the odium / Of having discovered sodium.'

Related Terms

Limerick Epigram Comic Verse Light Verse