Search Results for: limerick

Limericks

There was a brave girl of Connecticut
Who signaled the train with her pecticut,
Which the papers defined
As presence of mind
But deplorable absence of ecticut.

— Ogden Nash

Said a pupil of Einstein: “It’s rotten
To find I’d completely forgotten
That by living so fast
All my future’s my past,
And I’m buried before I’m begotten.”

— C.F. Best

A maiden at college called Breeze,
Weighed down by B.A.s and Litt.D.s,
Collapsed from the strain
Alas! It was plain
She was killing herself by degrees.

— Mrs. Warren

12/05/2023 UPDATE: Reader E. Norfolk-Ingway sent this — the author is unknown:

There was a young fellow named Cholmondeley,
Whose bride was so mellow and colmondeley
That the best man, Colquhoun,
An inane young bolqufoun,
Could only stand still and stare dolmondeley.

| Poems

Limerick

A Maths Master, teaching at Rye,
Bought his pupils a succulent π.
But we’re sorry to state
That 3/8
With 6=7 knows why.

— Punch, Sept. 29, 1937, via William R. Ransom, One Hundred Mathematical Curiosities, 1953

(I read this as “three overate, with sick sequels, heaven knows why.”)

| Poems · Science & Math

Literary Limericks

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%C3%9Altima_escena_de_Hamlet,_por_Jos%C3%A9_Moreno_Carbonero.jpg

Did Ophelia ask Hamlet to bed?
Was Gertrude incestuously wed?
Is there anything certain?
By the fall of the curtain
Almost everyone’s certainly dead.

— A. Cinna

Once a raven on Pluto’s dark shore
Brought the singular news: “Nevermore.”
‘Twas of useless avail
To ask further detail,
His reply was the same as before.

— Anthony Euwer

There once was a fellow called Hyde,
Whose twin self he couldn’t abide;
But Jekyll, the Devil,
Dragged Hyde to his level,
“Inside job,” cried Hyde, as he died.

— E.J. Jackson

When Ireland was bloody and leaderless,
The tedious, garrulous Daedalus —
Having failed both as priest
And as Glorious Beast —
Sailed away to write books that were readerless.

— Gina Berkeley

| Literature · Poems

Philosophical Limericks

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:David_Hume.jpg

Cried the maid: “You must marry me, Hume!”
A statement that made David fume.
He said: “In cause and effect,
There is a defect;
That it’s mine you can only assume.”

— P.W.R. Foot

Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury thought
Life was nasty and brutish and short;
But contracts, once made,
Would come to our aid,
And ensure modest comfort — at court.

— Peter Alexander

There was a young man who said: “Ayer
Has answered the atheist’s prayer,
For a Hell one can’t verify
Surely can’t terrify —
At least till you know you are there.”

— Anonymous

| Poems

Unrhymed Limericks

There was an old fellow called Hugger,
Who was captain and mate of a fishing smack;
When a yacht crossed his bows,
He said: “My word!
It’s an awfully good thing it wasn’t a liner.”

— Arnold Hyde

An American girl in Versailles
Said: “I feel so ashamed I could weep.
Ten days I’ve been here
And not gone to the Louvre.”
“Never mind,” said someone, “it’s possibly only the hard water.”

— Quoted in Anthony Burgess’ But Do Blondes Prefer Gentlemen?

There was a young lady of Ealing
Who walked up and down on the window;
And there, for a while,
To vary her technique,
She practiced strathspeying and hornpipes.

— Allen M. Laing

There was a young lady called Dawes,
Went out to a dance without gloves;
Her ma said: “Amelia!
Should anyone dance with you,
He’ll take you for one of them actresses.”

— Anonymous

| Poems

A British Limerick

A young man called Cholmondeley Colquhoun
Kept as a pet a babolquhoun.
His mother said, “Cholmondeley,
Do you think it quite colmondeley
To feed your babolquhoun with a spolquhoun?”

(Via Willard R. Espy.)

| Language · Poems

Math Limericks

There was an old man who said, “Do
Tell me how I’m to add two and two!
I’m not very sure
That it does not make four,
But I fear that is almost too few.”

A mathematician confided
A Möbius strip is one-sided.
You’ll get quite a laugh
If you cut one in half,
For it stays in one piece when divided.

A mathematician named Ben
Could only count modulo ten.
He said, “When I go
Past my last little toe,
I have to start over again.”

By Harvey L. Carter:

‘Tis a favorite project of mine
A new value of π to assign.
I would fix it at 3,
For it’s simpler, you see,
Than 3.14159.

J.A. Lindon points out that 1264853971.2758463 is a limerick:

One thousand two hundred and sixty
four million eight hundred and fifty
three thousand nine hun-
dred and seventy one
point two seven five eight four six three.

From Dave Morice, in the November 2004 Word Ways:

A one and a one and a one
And a one and a one and a one
And a one and a one
And a one and a one
Equal ten. That’s how adding is done.

(From Through the Looking-Glass:)

‘And you do Addition?’ the White Queen asked. ‘What’s one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Alice. ‘I lost count.’

‘She can’t do Addition,’ the Red Queen interrupted.

An anonymous classic:

\displaystyle \int_{1}^{\sqrt[3]{3}}z^{2}dz \times \textup{cos} \frac{3\pi }{9} = \textup{ln} \sqrt[3]{e}

The integral z-squared dz
From one to the cube root of three
Times the cosine
Of three pi over nine
Equals log of the cube root of e.

A classic by Leigh Mercer:

\displaystyle \frac{12 + 144 + 20 + 3\sqrt{4}}{7} + \left ( 5 \times 11 \right ) = 9^{2} + 0

A dozen, a gross, and a score
Plus three times the square root of four
Divided by seven
Plus five times eleven
Is nine squared and not a bit more.

UPDATE: Reader Jochen Voss found this on a blackboard at Warwick University:

If M’s a complete metric space
(and non-empty), it’s always the case:
If f’s a contraction
Then, under its action,
Exactly one point stays in place.

And Trevor Hawkes sent this:

A mathematician called Klein
Thought the Möbius strip was divine.
He said if you glue
The edges of two
You get a nice bottle like mine.

| Poems · Science & Math