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A.Word.A.Day--clerihew

clerihew (KLER-uh-hyoo) noun

A humorous, pseudo-biographical verse of four lines of uneven length, with the rhyming scheme AABB, and the first line containing the name of the subject.

[After writer Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956), who originated it.]

Here is one of the first clerihews he wrote (apparently while feeling bored in a science class):

Sir Humphrey Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.

"Walter Bagehot, our most famous editor (from 1859 to 1877), advocated `animated moderation' in writing. And Sir Walter Layton, Crowther's immediate predecessor, spent hours rewriting his staff's articles--so many hours that one of his frustrated colleagues hit back with a clerihew:

Sir Walter Layton
Has a passion for alteration
Would to God someone could alter
Sir Walter."

"Settled in his living room with Italian liqueurs, I notice poet Henry Taylor's latest book, Brief Candles, a collection of clerihews: `Hart Crane/ plunged into the bounding main./ His situation could not have been graver:/ His father invented the candy lifesaver.'"
Michael Dirda; Excursions; The Washington Post; Jul 2, 2000.

This week's theme: words to describe poetic forms.

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