Definition of "clerihew"

CLERIHEW CONTEST. CNV announces a clerihew contest, with the best examples to be published in this newsletter.

1984, Cum Notis Variorum: The Newsletter of the Music Library, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, Calif.: Music Library, University of California, Berkeley, page 115

He [Peter Warlock] was the writer of brilliant limericks and clerihews and had a fine line in barbed invective.

2002, Trevor Hold, “Peter Warlock (1894–1930)”, in Parry to Finzi: Twenty English Song-composers, Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, page 330

A clerihew must contain the subject's name in the first line, be four lines in length, consist of two sets of rhyming couplets, have third and fourth lines longer than the first and second, and take a whimsical rather than cynical view of its subject.

2008, Christopher Foyle, Foyle’s Further Philavery: A Cornucopia of Lexical Delights, Edinburgh: Chambers, page 38

Among other clerihew writers one can find the name of J[ohn] R[onald] R[euel] Tolkien, the author of The Hobbit and the most famous at present trilogy The Lord of the Ring[s] widely read and enjoyed by adults and children alike.

2009, Иностранные языки в школе [Inostrannyje jazyki v škole, Foreign Languages at School], Moscow: Гос. учебно-педагог. изд-во Министерства просвещения РСФСР [Gos. učebno-pedagog. izd-vo Ministerstva prosveščenija RSFSR, Ministry of Education of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic], page 32

This form was initiated by Edmund Clerihew Bentley who throughout his life kept churning out Clerihews, the name they ultimately became known by; he had published three collections under the name E. Clerihew.

2009, Paul Joel Freeman, “Perverse”, in Wit in English, [Bloomington, Ind.]: Xlibris, page 256

Warner Allen's own creation, the wine merchant William Clerihew, had appeared in 'Tokay of the Comet Year', a short story published in 1930, and also in the book Mr. Clerihew: Wine Merchant three years later. […] The Clerihew name was a hat-tip to [Edmund Clerihew] Bentley, who had, long before, devised the humorous four-line verse form known as the clerihew.

2017, E[dmund] C[lerihew] Bentley, H. Warner Allen, “Introduction”, in Trent’s Own Case (The Detective Club), London: HarperCollins Publishers