Good clerihew, and a good word, too, clerihew. The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as "A humorous verse, usually consisting of two unmatched rhyming couplets, about a person whose name generally serves as one of the rhymes. After Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956), British writer."
That's fine, but why is it named after the creator's middle name, not his last name? Why isn't this little poem called a Bentley? According to the OED, in 1940 Bentley explained, "This formless form of verse was so called because my book, ‘Biography for Beginners’, in which it originated, was published under the name of E. Clerihew, my Christian name. This was in 1906, and the name was applied to the form soon after this by some unknown reader."
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Good clerihew, and a good word, too, clerihew. The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as "A humorous verse, usually consisting of two unmatched rhyming couplets, about a person whose name generally serves as one of the rhymes. After Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956), British writer."
That's fine, but why is it named after the creator's middle name, not his last name? Why isn't this little poem called a Bentley? According to the OED, in 1940 Bentley explained, "This formless form of verse was so called because my book, ‘Biography for Beginners’, in which it originated, was published under the name of E. Clerihew, my Christian name. This was in 1906, and the name was applied to the form soon after this by some unknown reader."
Sir Hemphrey Davy
Detested gravy;
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium
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