What does "clerihew" mean?

A humorous rhyme of four lines with the rhyming scheme AABB, usually regarding a person mentioned in the first line.

What is a synonym for "clerihew"?

Common synonyms include: ballad, bucolic, dirge, elegy, epic, epigram.

Pronounced //ˈklɛɹɨˌhjuː//.

//ˈklɛɹɨˌhjuː// noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Noun

1
A humorous rhyme of four lines with the rhyming scheme AABB, usually regarding a person mentioned in the first line.
"CLERIHEW CONTEST. CNV announces a clerihew contest, with the best examples to be published in this newsletter."
2
Alternative letter-case form of clerihew. alt-of
"This form was initiated by Edmund Clerihew Bentley who throughout his life kept churning out Clerihews, the name they ultimately became known by; he had published three collections under the name E. Clerihew."
3
a witty satiric verse containing two rhymed couplets and mentioning a famous person wordnet

"CLERIHEW CONTEST. CNV announces a clerihew contest, with the best examples to be published in this newsletter."

Named after English humourist and novelist Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875–1956), who invented the rhyme.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.