The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form

Delightful discovery – through ResearchBuzz – an online dicitonary which gives definitions as limericks.

Not all of them are amusing – as this one for ‘assistance’

“Where is the assistance? There’s naught!”
Cried a man whose whole fam’ly was caught
In tsunami waves vast
Cataclysmic! too fast
To flee tragedy nature had wrought.

Author : Jane Auerbach, submitted: 05 Feb 2005 – The first words of this quote came from a 28-year-old Indonesian, immediately following the terrible disaster that befell South Asia on December 26, 2004. Despite a massive outpouring of foreign aid, the tsunami destroyed so much local infrastructure that assistance could not quickly reach all who needed it.

But they are all super interesting, and some brilliant – read this one for ‘additive inverse’

Consider a negative 3.
How useful in math can it be?
In addition it will
Make a 3 become nil.
It’s an additive inverse, you see.

Author : Chris Doyle, submitted: 07 May 2005

And you can join the project… Read about it here

5 comments

  2. All I can do is offer my favourite limericks to the project.

    1) (this is by Gilbert of Gilbert & Sullivan)
    There was an old man of St Bees
    Who was horribly stung by a wasp.
    When they said: “Does it hurt?”
    He replied: “No, it doesn’t—
    It’s a good job it wasn’t a hornet!”

    2) (Short limericks)
    There was a poet from Timbuctoo,
    Whose poems ended at line two.

    There was a poet called Dunn.

    [And there’s the unwritten one about a poet called Nero]

  3. hey, you can join the project – why dont’ you – they have just finished the Aa’s and have started with the Ba’s – clearly they have a long way to go!

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