Words & Stuff

Recently tried to search for the origin of the following limerick:

The limerick, peculiar to English

Is a verse form that's hard to extinguish

Once Congress in session

Decreed its suppression

But people got around it by writing the last line without any rhyme or meter.

Which led me to a page of Limerick Myths, a page that (among other things) makes clear that in fact the limerick is not exclusively an English-language form. (Content warning: includes a couple of examples of NSFW limericks, including one (at the end) which is arguably rapey.)

That page also introduced me to the following words:

paroxytonic

Refers to a line or word that has penultimate-syllable stress.

hypercatalectic

(Misspelled in the article.) Refers to having an extra syllable after the end of a metrical foot.

paeonic

Refers to a metrical foot consisting of one long and three short syllables. “Depending on the position of the long syllable, the four peaons are called a first, second, third, or fourth peaon,” according to Wikipedia.

For more about limericks, see also column l and column lll. For more about syllable stress and metrical feet, see column T.