clerihew

Example Sentences

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Recent Examples of clerihew Edited by Dava Sobel NOTE: A clerihew is a four-line poetic format invented in 1905 by Edmund Clerihew Bentley, who wrote humorous rhymes about all manner of persons, making frivolous fun of their names. Melissa Dehner, Scientific American, 26 Mar. 2021 Easy to write and fun to read, entrants were asked to write a clerihew that describes a famous scientist or other person, or event closely associated with fire. William Gurstelle, WIRED, 16 Aug. 2011
Recent Examples of Synonyms for clerihew
Noun
  • This extraordinary collection of two volumes of poems and a third of prose shows the empathy, intuition, and exquisite use of the natural world that make Oliver the heiress of Emerson and Thoreau.
    AudioFile Magazine September 30, Literary Hub, 30 Sep. 2025
  • Do not carve your poem into a coconut, even though that would be pretty cool.
    Connie Ogle, Miami Herald, 30 Sep. 2025
Noun
  • When women and men speaking Cervantes’ tongue are sent to concentration camps like the South Florida Detention Facility or CECOT, then what use is a sonnet?
    Ed Simon September 22, Literary Hub, 22 Sep. 2025
  • To the west, the London Eye pirouettes above the skyline—to the east, Shakespeare’s Globe serves legendary sonnets.
    Lewis Nunn, Forbes.com, 6 Sep. 2025
Noun
  • That celebrated epigram is delivered by the character of Octave, who is the greatest creation of Renoir’s career—not least because he’s played by Renoir in a performance that’s essentially a self-portrait, even an onscreen self-creation.
    Richard Brody, New Yorker, 30 July 2025
  • It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story.
    Jann E. Freed, Forbes.com, 18 June 2025
Noun
  • There are some touching moments, dirty limericks and a good balance of characters presented by veterans of the scene.
    Frederick Melo, Twin Cities, 2 Aug. 2025
  • They were trained to repeat dirty jokes and limericks about Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer to customers.
    Rachel Hale, USA Today, 10 July 2025
Noun
  • From the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, villanelle was simply the French term for an Italian country song, and during the Renaissance, poets often used the title for their work regardless of a poem’s specific structure.
    The Editors, JSTOR Daily, 19 Aug. 2025
  • Elongated and paved with bricks, the path is a closed form, a kind of physical villanelle that thwarts the experience of continuity or the feeling of finitude.
    Hamilton Cain, BostonGlobe.com, 2 Mar. 2023
Noun
  • Revered by all three Abrahamic religions, the psalms were often recited, read, and sung in routine worship.
    Brendan Ruberry, semafor.com, 23 Sep. 2025
  • Archbishop Bernard Hebda addressed some 2,000 people at the vigil, where psalms were sung and the silences burrowed deep in the wide room.
    Jesse Bedayn, Twin Cities, 28 Aug. 2025
Noun
  • The song was released with the video, an ode to pastels that depicts the changing of the guard from one album to the next with a snake turning into a cluster of butterflies.
    Larisha Paul, Rolling Stone, 1 Oct. 2025
  • The rear hallway and staircases were envisioned by James Thomas as an ode to the Amalfi Coast and Greek islands.
    Tori Latham, Robb Report, 30 Sep. 2025
Noun
  • The film marks his second time grappling with the postmodern author’s ideas on screen, following 2014’s Inherent Vice, a rueful elegy to California counterculture, which was itself the first, and to date only, official adaptation of Pynchon in cinema.
    Rory Doherty, Time, 26 Sep. 2025
  • This is her elegy, her memorial, her voice, her face.
    Sophie Monks Kaufman, IndieWire, 3 Sep. 2025

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Cite this Entry

“Clerihew.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/clerihew. Accessed 7 Oct. 2025.

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