Popular form of short, humorous verse, often nonsensical and frequently ribald.
It consists of five lines, rhyming aabba , and the dominant metre is anapestic, with two feet in the third and fourth lines and three feet in the others. The origin of the term is obscure, but a group of poets in County Limerick, Ire., wrote limericks in Irish in the 18th century. The first collections in English date from с 1820. Among the most famous are those in Edward Lear 's Book of Nonsense (1846).