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.
- 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.
1920s: named after Edmund Clerihew Bentley (see Bentley, Edmund Clerihew), who invented it.
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