Hi everyone. I'm working on a design assignment where I'm supposed to be using limericks. I've never found limericks to be particularly amusing. "Bawdy" (the adjective that always seems to be linked to limericks) humour can certainly be funny, but I can't ever remember reading a limerick and laughing out loud.
Does anyone have a favourite that they could share? Know any clever ones? Any particularly literate ones? Any about words?
Cheers,
/silen
Greetings, Silen.
It's too early in the morning where I am to come up with any limericks, but if you do a search on "limerick" you'll find dozens (probably in the Wordplay forum) if not scores.
and make sure your search go back at least 6 months, back in february, i had an attach of limerick madness, and churned out about half the posts in a 100 post thread.. and most posts, not just mine, had more than one limerick.
if you are interested in classic limericks, try Edward Lear, his tend not to be bawdy, and are cute, if not outright funny.
There was an old man with a beard
Who said "It is just as I've feared,
Two owl, a hen
Three larks and wren,
Have all made their nests in my beard!"
Oh, boy, Silen, did you ever come to the right place! Check out this link for a ton.
http://wordsmith.org/board/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=wordplay&Number=57347Welcome to the board, by the way!
Edit: The above link is a perfect example of why we don't like to post more than 99 posts to any one thread. If you read the whole thing, you will notice that posts 100 and beyond have lost their way. If you want to avoid that happening even sooner, go into "edit profile", click on "display preferences" and change the number in the box below this phrase "Total posts to show on one page when viewing a thread in flat mode (default is 10)" to 99. Once you have done this, you will never have to click on "show all" or seperate page numbers!
There was an old poet from Limerick
Who ran out of punchlines and gimmericks,
"O dear me!", he'd say,
"Have my words gone away?"
And that's why this last line has no grin or kick.
--WO'N
Thanks everyone. That was exactly what I was after.
And thanks Whitman. That was the sort that I was\am trying to write. A self-referential one about struggling to write a limerick, except I was thinking about having the last line NOT rhyme... to illustrate the very problem!
Thanks again,
/silen
Limericks are meant to rhyme
Usually, if not all of the time.
But don't be a fool -
It's no hard and fast rule.
Not all of them must.
A cunning and witty young man,
Who hailed from the south of Japan,
Said "The problem with me,
And my limericks, see,
Is that I always try to fit as many words into the last line as I possibly can."
Is that I always try to fit as many words into the last line as I possibly can."
Echoes of Ogden Nash, doc!
I cannot write a poem,
'cause my thoughts, they tend to go, um,
in one ear,
and out the other.
But I will, just to show 'em.
I post this traditional style piece with some trepidation...
There was a young lady named Doris
who had a most tuneful ********.
It sang and it hummed
and if lovingly strummed
would render the whole Anvil Chorus.
dxb, you don't need to feel trepidatious, nor do you need to put asterisks in place of the word thesaurus...
perhaps dxb feel(s) trepidatious, because he is afraid his words might cause someone to attempt a crude trepination!
meanwhile, i suspect i know ****** and that is it not thesaurus, but what, pray tell, is the Anvil chorus?
The Anvil chorus comes from Il Trovatore (The Troubador) an opera by Giuseppe Verdi. I recall that the chorus was used many years ago as background music to a scene from a Disney wildlife film. The shot showed two rams repeatedly charging at each other and butting heads in time to the music - trying to gain favour with potential mates I guess (no strumming tho'). That, together with its name, should give you some idea of its character – quite unsuited to the use I’ve made of it!
I guess I might feel trepidation, and would certainly violently disapprove, if a *****ectomy was planned; it wouldn’t be performed on me, however! But... I thought trepanation or trephanition was applied to the skull?