Clerihew
A clerihew is a light verse quatrain
rhyming "aabb",
usually dealing with a person named in the first line.
For example:
Sir Humphrey Davy
Abominated gravy
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium
"This was the first clerihew written
by Edmund
Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956). The English detective
story writer composed it while only a schoolboy,
according to his schoolmate G.K. Chesterton, "when
he sat listening to a chemical exposition, with his rather
bored air and a blank sheet of blotting paper before
him." Bently, one of the few people to have a word
honoring his middle name, could in Chesterton's words
"write clear and unadulterated nonsense...with serious
simplicity."
(Robert Hendrickson, The Henry Holt Encyclopedia
of Word and Phrase Origins, New York, NY)
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