Webster
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Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Limerick

Lim′er·ick, n. [Said to be from a song with the same verse construction, current in Ireland, the refrain of which contains the place name Limerick.] A nonsense poem of five anapestic lines, of which lines 1, 2, and 5 are of there feet, and rime, and lines 3 and 4 are of two feet, and rime; as —

There was a young lady, Amanda, Whose Ballades Lyriques were quite fin de Siècle, I deem But her Journal Intime Was what sent her papa to Uganda.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Noah Porter, editor (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913). Public domain. Text as transcribed by MICRA, Inc., from Project Gutenberg. Changed for Deep Dive Bible: Greek, which our source spelled in Latin letters, set in Greek letters; entries of one spelling merged into one article; Greek words our source left out (shown as “?”), read from the 1898 printing, from the same plates (the Library of Congress’s copy), where the place could be found with certainty. Of the others, 1,362 (a word or a single letter each) were inferred by AI from the context by the dictionary’s own rules and are marked with a wavy underline (tap or point at one to see the note); the rest, which could not be inferred with confidence, are left as “?”.