noun

• A short comic or nonsensical verse, typically in two rhyming couplets with lines of unequal length and referring to a famous person.

  ‘Much of the lightest verse of Rochester or Buckingham has as sharp a wit as one of E. C. Bentley's clerihews.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘There are also some laughs in the chapter on clerihews.’
  • ‘If you don't know what a ‘clerihew’ is, I will explain next week, with another example - perhaps about David Beckham.’
  • ‘The literary form, the clerihew, was invented by a schoolboy, all about Sir Humphrey Davy who lived with the odium of having discovered sodium.’