qms has adopted the word limerick, looked up 0 words, created 12 lists, listed 694 words, written 2982 comments, added 0 tags, and loved 92 words.

Comments by qms

  • Just where might you look for a wallaby

    Or find a big prairie dog colony?

    What habitats boast

    The least and the most

    And why, is the realm of chorology.

    December 13, 2018

  • In the matter of Moses’s toes

    Just what may the scholar suppose?

    The text could be comical

    Or else anatomical.

    He’d better define the skopos.

    Any unfamiliar with the matter of Moses’s toes can be enlightened at this link:

    https://youtu.be/cQLnrBxVw3M

    December 12, 2018

  • One of the nicest Swedish deserts is a big sponge cake coated in whipped cream and studded with strawberries. In my wife’s family this is called by a name that translates to “maternal grandmother’s cake” but phonetically it is “murmur’s caca.” This give pause to those who are first introduced to it.

    December 11, 2018

  • The forms of address can get messy

    When croc and newcomer are freshie.

    I’d stumble, by gosh,

    ‘Cause we call them frosh

    And ‘gators are what might distress me.

    December 11, 2018

  • Old crocs that are cruising the Nile

    To Aussie eyes look juvenile.

    They are mighty paltry

    Compared to a saltie

    And prosaically fluviatile.

    December 11, 2018

  • The pepparkakor is one of the seemingly infinite variety of cookies my wife’s Swedish family bakes at Christmas.

    December 10, 2018

  • Ol’ bilby persists in his pranks

    But, weary, I tell him, “No thanks.”

    He may embrace fully

    The wus and the wully

    But my brief stops well short of Manx.

    December 10, 2018

  • A young person’s mind is in tumult,

    While fertile and green it is uncult,

    So passionate youth

    Neglects tact for truth

    And old withered ears hear an insult.

    December 10, 2018

  • To set a tone lofty and moral

    Some leaders eschew petty quarrel.

    The goblin by contrast

    Loves insult and bombast.

    He’s hopelessly clumsy and borrel.

    December 9, 2018

  • Some suitors use comic material;

    Others are sweet and ethereal.

    Some try derring-do

    But the most daring woo

    Is feigning the sexless empyreal.

    December 8, 2018

  • Cf. ultramontaine.

    December 7, 2018

  • The still mists stifle and stain

    Befouling the air of the plain.

    Skies formerly bright

    With reason’s clear light

    Need fresh gusts ultramontaine.

    Cf. tramontane.

    December 7, 2018

  • He’ll hunt and he’ll peck to collect,

    To source, classify and connect,

    But Ernest’s best hope is

    An eccentric opus.

    He’ll never compose a pandect.

    Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit

    December 6, 2018

  • *Doffs his hat.*

    December 5, 2018

  • It’s deep sea that makes a shad amorous

    But love misapplied is calamitous.

    How bad must she feel

    To fall for an eel

    Then learn that her lover’s catadromous.

    December 5, 2018

  • While some play the spoons or the bones

    Let others percuss with two stones,

    Or add a zambomba

    And cry ¡Ay,caramba!

    Enriching the idiophones.

    December 4, 2018

  • The flourish too much was the bonnet;

    Mugs curses the moment he donned it.

    The cops on the hunt

    Could see through his stunt;

    His costume was sadly incondite.

    December 3, 2018

  • I prithee, begone! Thou annoyeth us,

    Profaning these sanctified cloisters.

    A monk should be meek

    And hark more than speak

    But thou stealeth ale and are boistous.

    December 2, 2018

  • His statements, both tweets and official,

    Give proof of a grave mental issue.

    His dad joined the Klan

    And formed the young man

    So call it a trait gentilitial.

    December 1, 2018

  • Fresh leather, uneven and knobbled,

    Must always be thoroughly cobbled,

    But whacking on lapstones

    Is hard on a chap’s bones

    And prospects of offspring are hobbled.

    November 30, 2018

  • This pasta, I think you will find,

    Accepts sauce of most any kind.

    She’s not a cheap floozy

    Yet cannot be choosy

    For, i-less, spaghett is thus blind.

    November 30, 2018

  • Penelope’s dining is stylish:

    A dainty and well-seasoned dry mix

    In a Baccarat bowl

    That’s food for the soul

    And catnip infusion en kylix.

    November 29, 2018

  • The customs of England amaze me.

    Their judges wear gowns and a jasey.

    Has no one there twigged

    They’re strangely bewigged

    Considering wiggy means crazy?

    November 28, 2018

  • It’s countless the pastas I’ve met:

    Farfalle, linguini and yet

    From out all the many,

    The orzo and penne,

    The noblest is humble spaghett!

    November 27, 2018

  • In Venice the portly Geppetto

    Near capsized a small vaporetto.

    Resolved to get thinner

    He had for his dinner

    A polpetta bewreathed in spaghetto.

    November 27, 2018

  • A remarkable archaeological achievement, bilby. Also reminds me why I don’t want to be a fisherman.

    November 27, 2018

  • Poetasters flog wits with a withy

    To beat out some words that are pithy,

    Or bellow in time

    To the hammer of rhyme,

    Forging lines on the limerick’s stithy.

    November 27, 2018

  • The hunk at the neighborhood lido

    Swims freestyle and wears a tight speedo,

    But for the curmudgeon

    It’s trunks and the trudgen

    To show that he’s conquered libido.

    November 26, 2018

  • Priscilla, provisioned for hope, went

    Again for light strokes and tapotement.

    Should charm not procure

    A willing masseur

    Her checkbook might lead to elopement.

    November 25, 2018

  • Don’t go to the doc with a sniffle;

    She’ll warn of an ominous siffle.

    A cough and a sneeze

    Are not real disease.

    Avoid all that medical piffle.

    November 24, 2018

  • I just never know which ones are going to tickle people. Thank you both.

    November 23, 2018

  • That cowpoke’s so terribly loud he

    Quite shook the whole house with his “Howdy!”

    From force of his yell

    My wife’s soufflée fell.

    We served it as apple pandowdy.

    November 23, 2018

  • Said Winchell to Howard Cosell,

    “Have you ever had cocozelle?”

    Retorted young Howard,

    “I am not empowered,

    To say more than that I know her well.”

    November 22, 2018

  • In isles of the mangrove and manatee

    Swamp fevers can bring on insanity.

    To shelter your senses

    The best of defenses

    Is glass after glass of sweet sanagree.

    November 21, 2018

  • The fingers are pale as a larval brood

    And squirm like slick worms that are starved for food.

    But goblin’s do jabbing

    And coarse pussy grabbing,

    More foul for insinuant parvitude.

    November 20, 2018

  • He’s not much at subtle philosophy

    And stranger to grace, wit or prosody,

    But his vulgar sallies

    Do gin up his rallies.

    He’s champ when it comes to ventosity.

    November 19, 2018

  • I desperately hope and assume he

    Will go before night fears consume me,

    And take from the scene

    His strut and his preen,

    His self-praise and raging contumely.

    November 18, 2018

  • The pyramids furnish the proof

    We need but the hand and the hoof,

    For camel and manpower

    Built every grand tower,

    Assisted by levers, the sledge and shadoof.

    November 17, 2018

  • The shopkeeper cheerfully mocks

    The way that the Boer farmer talks.

    He’ll give him a thistle bloom

    When he wants a disselboom

    To hitch up his weary old ox.

    November 16, 2018

  • Yep. I’m wired.

    November 15, 2018

  • The dancer with all limbs akimbo

    Contorts in a lithesome low limbo.

    In firelight flesh glistens

    And all the world listens

    To the beat of the haunting berimbau.

    November 15, 2018

  • In seasons when sunlight is sparse

    The Princess stays in by the hearth.

    When Winter is gone

    And sun soaks the lawn

    Her court will disport on the garth.

    November 14, 2018

  • Brilliant, bilby! Can you copyright a dance move? Shall we race to the patent office? Gimme, gimme, gimme some money for that shimmy.

    November 13, 2018

  • I guessed it was old Abenaki

    Or maybe a rare type of sake,

    But alestake is pure

    Plain English for sure

    And none of that furrin malarkey.

    November 13, 2018

  • When travelers and steeds need a break

    There’s thirst of the horses to slake,

    But coachmen will push

    To the welcoming bush

    And go till they find an alestake.

    November 13, 2018

  • On the Great Puget Sound Octopus Survey

    Beware what the scholars purvey!

    Octopuses are coy in their way.

    They’re dodgers and dancers,

    You can’t trust their answers.

    Who knows how they’ll twist a survey?

    November 12, 2018

  • Concerning our great tribulation

    I offer a hopeful illation:

    The problem derives

    From imbibing lies

    And abstinence ends pixilation.

    November 12, 2018

  • If I were more learned and polished

    I’d know how to say “Magdalen College.”

    Odd words likes demyship

    Would trip light from my lip

    And all would admire my knowledge.

    An interesting note on local pronunciation:

    Don’t make the faux pas of pronouncing Magdalen College ‘Mag-de-len College’. It’s pronounced ‘Maudlin College’. Just to make things more confusing, Magdalen Street in the centre of Oxford IS pronounced ‘Mag-de-len’ but lively Magdelen Road in East Oxford is pronounced ‘Maudlin’ like the college. Got it?!

    http://www.weeklyhome.com/blog/mistakes-not-make-when-you-visit-oxford.html

    November 11, 2018

  • It’s strange prey the bandicoot stalks.

    A sionnach, I learned, is a fox.

    It’s not like he will be

    A pal to a bilby.

    He’ll eat him like bagels and lox.

    November 10, 2018

  • Lexicographers eagerly explicate.

    Though some are disposed to pontificate

    A scholar who’s prudent

    Is modesty’s student,

    Inclined to first quietly ponderate.

    November 10, 2018

  • The bed ought to be like a cloister

    But some noisome neighbor may roister.

    An unwelcome shellfish

    Is Yanno, the selfish,

    Notoriously boisterous, oyster.

    November 10, 2018

  • My neighbor’s a noisy annoyer

    And drove me to go find a lawyer.

    Once keen on hip hop art

    He now swears by Mozart

    My lawyer has wrought metanoia.

    November 9, 2018

  • Greetings.

    November 8, 2018

  • In typical practice of Trumpery

    Civility’s scarce and perfunctory.

    The organs of speech,

    Disgraced in the breach,

    Are put to a service emunctory.

    November 8, 2018

  • There’s uncles and aunts and grandmothers

    And spawn of your sisters and brothers,

    A small baldaquin

    For all balder kin

    And tables in sunlight for others.

    November 7, 2018

  • Is this how our twigs should be bent?

    The goblin’s example has meant

    The way to succeed

    Is easy indeed,

    With bluster and pompous ostent.

    November 6, 2018

  • A penetrating observation, bilby.

    November 5, 2018

  • This is how the critics at Variety acclaim a successful all-women show. Compare boffo and brava. (The all-caps is a regrettable bit of condescension.)

    November 5, 2018

  • There once was a parrot named Darryl

    Who perched by the store’s pickle barrel.

    In his salty past

    He’d sailed ‘fore the mast

    So chattered of halyard and parrel.

    November 5, 2018

  • As humpback compares to a minke

    Or fist to a fluttering pinky

    Do engines for trains

    That roar ’cross the plains

    Compare to the stuttering dinkey.

    November 4, 2018

  • Let speciesism never asunder us

    But love from we two make but one of us.

    Though some think it odd,

    My sweet cephalopod,

    Forever you’ll be my dear wonderpus.

    November 3, 2018

  • The yard has a drive and a fertile edge

    Set round by a well trimmed myrtle hedge.

    It’s modest for sure

    But green and secure,

    A bargain in comfortable curtilage.

    November 3, 2018

  • Reading comments such as those at eckle-feckle I grieve that I missed some merry times at Wordnik.

    November 3, 2018

  • Surveyors come always in twos.

    The head man is careful to choose

    A jolly companion

    To plant the last fanion

    Then off to the pub and the booze.

    November 2, 2018

  • Old friends will at times feel the urge

    To lay down their tools and converge

    To learn how each fares,

    Their hopes and their cares,

    In the warmth of a cozy auberge.

    November 1, 2018

  • The caravans come from afar

    With goods for the local bazaar

    Paid each local chief,

    Lest they come to grief,

    A bribe that they called a caphar.

    October 31, 2018

  • A poet I once knew named Basil

    Tried hard to impress and to dazzle.

    For verses erotic

    He liked the exotic

    And spurned the dull sonnet for ghazal.

    October 30, 2018

  • Astride his dark snorting Bucephalus

    Whose thundering hoofbeats can deafen us,

    The horseman delights

    In haunting our nights,

    More horrid because he’s acephalous.

    October 29, 2018

  • The boffins who deal in robotics

    Avoid the weird look of exotics

    So study a lot

    To mix pet and bot,

    Applying zoosemiotics.

    October 28, 2018

  • We can't do much more than deplore

    The tenants our frail bodies store.

    I’m glad of the pills

    Addressing my ills

    With versatile pharmacaphore.

    October 27, 2018

  • Some radicals acting to start a “-vism”

    More pungent than middle-class artivism

    Now practice disruption

    By fragrant eruption,

    Harassing their targets with fartivism.

    October 26, 2018

  • mayonnaise

    October 26, 2018

  • Its signature characteristic

    Is ponds that bespeckle the district.

    By locals it’s said

    They mark giants’ tread.

    More likely their forming was listric.

    October 25, 2018

  • In times of great want and austerity

    Comparisons pump our prosperity.

    We’re pleased to discover

    A more wretched other

    And comfort ourselves in alterity.

    October 24, 2018

  • His minions must always be loyal,

    Defending his hopeless turmoil.

    They fall out of favor

    Who waffle or waver;

    He does not forgive or assoil.

    October 23, 2018

  • Emissions have made the earth’s sky sick

    And soiled all the waters epeiric.

    We should get on board

    The Paris Accord

    Then learn the new rules and comply quick.

    October 22, 2018

  • I look forward to your contributions.

    October 21, 2018

  • His duty and truth are betrayed

    With every new rodomontade.

    His coarse conversation

    Is tergiversation,

    His speeches sheer fanfaronade.

    October 21, 2018

  • In life Ghengis Khan dressed in ermine,

    For headgear - a tight proto-turban.

    We know not his clothes

    In deathly repose

    But know they’ll be found in a kurgan.

    October 20, 2018

  • Museums these days are eclectic,

    If some call it art they collect it,

    From classical schools

    To stuff with no rules

    And even the paleotechnic.

    October 19, 2018

  • There once was a prince, name of Hamlet,

    A madman (or did he just sham it?),

    Who wore silken pants

    For his epic rants

    But talked to the dead wearing camlet.

    October 18, 2018

  • Some argue the path to true wisdom

    Begins with the font and the chrism,

    But others protest

    The infant is blessed

    With insights of deep innatism.

    October 17, 2018

  • Ambitions advance and they ebb

    Like throbs of the life-giving web.

    Once ardently sought

    Are goals now forgot

    And heart-breaking woe a mere bleb.

    October 16, 2018

  • A dun dune adorns a beach scene

    While inland the valley is green.

    The one’s made of sand

    The other, rich land,

    Yet somehow they both are called dene.

    October 15, 2018

  • How best the erosion abet

    In dunes by nor’easters beset?

    Though some, shrugging, say

    You only can pray

    It makes much more sense to revet.

    October 14, 2018

  • Brett’s drinking improved only ullage;

    His judgment was worn to a dull edge.

    Discernment unclear,

    He mistook for beer

    Concoctions of poisonous sullage.

    October 13, 2018

  • May each dreaming sailor’s keen urge be

    To break from the dock and to surge free

    With wind at her back

    From tack after tack

    Her hair streaming out like a burgee.

    October 12, 2018

  • zuzu, you make it a pleasure to post them.

    October 11, 2018

  • His lashings of gold are grotesque,

    A Midas self-mocked in burlesque.

    His shill, pallid Pence,

    Is small change and hence

    Permitted the cold plateresque.

    October 11, 2018

  • The light of decorum’s entombed,

    God knows when we’ll see it exhumed.

    The shadows that cloak us

    In all that’s atrocious

    Will stay till that lamp is relumed.

    October 10, 2018

  • Some think there are mischievous progeny

    Descended from tales of cosmogony.

    No maker need be

    A he nor a she

    But a being of holy androgyny.

    October 9, 2018

  • The nurses are unctuous and syrupy,

    Their chatter theatrically chirrupy

    To make you feel sure

    They’ll manage your cure

    With doses of heliotherapy.

    October 8, 2018

  • Their postures are true antebellum;

    They’d write if they could on old vellum.

    They yearn for the day

    When cotton held sway

    And call Sumter’s walls their sacellum.

    October 7, 2018

  • It could be a Stephen King clown stole

    Some oil giant’s blackening brown soul

    And crammed it like phlegm

    In the steel flower’s stem,

    Accounting for obstacles downhole.

    October 6, 2018

  • There’s almost a sanctified aura

    To ruins of great Roman fora,

    But best bear in mind

    They thronged with our kind

    Who idled their time playing morra.

    October 5, 2018

  • A justice should be an upstander,

    A model of frankness and candor,

    And heaven forfend

    He need to defend

    ‘Gainst stories of drunken esclandre.

    October 4, 2018

  • The pundits deploy their ungainly tact,

    Unwilling to say what is plainly fact.

    He doesn’t misstate

    Or exaggerate:

    The man is a frank mythomaniac.

    October 3, 2018

  • It’s good for a lusty air crew,

    No more, they contend, than their due:

    High over the deep

    While passengers sleep

    To join in a lively airscrew.

    October 2, 2018

  • The problems that harry the nation

    Persist to the general frustration.

    They’re readily dumped

    And easily trumped

    By the goblin’s bizarre self centration.

    October 1, 2018

  • A physicist, stars in his eyes,

    Cried, “Love is a lovely surprise!

    The system’s enthalpy

    Is measurably paltry

    But, oh! How it does energize!”

    September 30, 2018

  • Sorry. These old eyes ain’t what they used to be.

    September 30, 2018

  • I think Amsterdamster is more pleasing to the ear tham Amsterdammer.

    September 30, 2018

  • A bad shoe can drive a man batshit.

    It shouldn’t be work to attach it.

    You needn’t bend over

    To put on a loafer.

    To hell with the laces and latchet!

    September 29, 2018

  • Well done, zuzu!

    September 28, 2018

  • Ahoy, bilby! Long time no read. Have you been off foraging for tasty lichens?

    September 28, 2018

  • The news makes me feel like old Job.

    It bruise some cranial lobe.

    I crave only quiet;

    I cannot deny it,

    I’m now a confirmed phonophobe.

    September 28, 2018

  • In Heorot he gave them all hope,

    At least a bare method to cope.

    Now hear Grendel’s roar

    At our trembling door

    But where is our comforting scop?

    Note: Pronunciation guidance varies: skop, shop and shope. The last of these is the one I was taught by scholars I trust.

    September 27, 2018

  • Heorot is a mead-hall described in the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf as "the foremost of halls under heaven." It served as a palace for King Hroðgar, a legendary Danish king of the sixth century. Heorot means 'Hart, stag'. After the malicious entity Grendel slaughters the inhabitants of the hall, the Geatish hero Beowulf defends the royal hall before subsequently defeating him. Later Grendel's Mother attacks the inhabitants of the hall, and she too is subsequently defeated by Beowulf.

    September 27, 2018

  • Tank, I am not worthy - but immensely flattered.

    September 27, 2018

  • The goblin of course could still tweet.

    I know it’s a foolish conceit

    To wish for (pro patria!)

    A case of anarthria

    But wouldn’t the silence be sweet?

    September 26, 2018

  • A bull fight’s a basically cruel event,

    Provoking a harmless great ruminant

    By pain and affronts

    And daredevil stunts

    To actions soon fatally fulminant.

    September 25, 2018

  • I think that there surely has got to be

    At least a faint taint of hypocrisy

    In places that get

    Their guests very wet

    And call the procedure hydropathy.

    September 24, 2018

  • Demure to ensure there’s no blame cast

    The coy maid is cautiously shamefast.

    By blushes and sighs

    She cleverly tries

    How long she can make the old game last.

    September 23, 2018

  • See skein.

    September 23, 2018

  • There once was a zealot named Wiggin

    Who practiced outlandish religion.

    Despite vulgar stares

    He said morning prayers

    Clad only in boots and a biggin.

    September 22, 2018

  • A beam of bright light was once set upon

    By ambushers with a sly etalon,

    Their ingenious aim -

    To make the beam lame

    And harness the hitch in its get along.

    September 21, 2018

  • Good beer is one of life’s fine things,

    Consoling our dry stomach linings;

    So God bless the brewer!

    Let’s never have fewer

    Of vats and of casks and of finings.

    September 20, 2018

  • Miss Grundy was quite at a loss

    To find a light comment to toss,

    So breathlessly viewed

    That arrogant nude,

    The fleshless, compelling kouros.

    September 19, 2018

  • ‘Mongst hulking great vessels of war

    That bristle with weapons galore

    The humble patache

    With nimble panache

    Still flits between ship’s side and shore.

    September 18, 2018

  • Thank you kindly, zuzu.

    September 18, 2018

  • The curse of the bashful winebibber

    Is drink at the first makes him glibber

    But eloquence fades,

    The right word evades

    And soon he’ll do no more than gibber.

    September 17, 2018

  • Blasphemers will profane the altar

    And read from a mischievous psalter.

    Some, without qualms

    Will distort the psalms;

    Instead of true preaching they palter.

    September 16, 2018

  • Her enemies cruelly abuse her

    And call her a heartless Medusa.

    Such charges are wild;

    She’s really quite mild,

    No more than a creepy empuse.

    September 15, 2018

  • The pirates triumphant are plunder-drunk,

    Their hardships for now all in wonder sunk,

    Engorged with their loot

    Of viands and fruit,

    Forgetting their dinners of dunderfunk.

    September 14, 2018

  • The Camelot ladies adore it

    But knights of the table deplore it.

    For questing you need

    Some strong ale and mead.

    You can’t hunt the Beast drinking morat.

    September 13, 2018

  • See also Questing Beast.

    September 13, 2018

  • The Questing Beast, or the Beast Glatisant (Barking Beast), is a monster from Arthurian legend. It is the subject of quests undertaken by famous knights such as King Pellinore, Sir Palamedes, and Sir Percival.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questing_Beast

    September 13, 2018

  • OED

    wist. - To have cognizance or knowledge of; to be aware of; to know (as a fact or an existing thing).

    September 12, 2018

  • “Oh, mirror,” he asked, “Dost thou wist

    If better than I could exist?”

    The dun-colored prism

    Of his dullardism

    Showed only his face in the mist.

    September 12, 2018

  • Once crimes were resolved by MacGyver,

    That endlessly clever contriver.

    Now villains are caught

    More often than not

    By white-coated experts on livor.

    September 11, 2018

  • Gello in Greek mythology, is a female demon or revenant who threatens the reproductive cycle by causing infertility, spontaneous abortion, and infant mortality. By the Byzantine era, the gelloudes (γελλούδες) were considered a class of beings. Women believed to be under demonic possession by gelloudes might stand trial or be subjected to exorcism.

    Gyllou, Gylou, Gillo, or Gelu are some of its alternate forms.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gello

    September 10, 2018

  • Plural of Gello.

    September 10, 2018

  • A cowboy not home on the range

    Is given to conduct that’s strange.

    In search of romance

    He’ll try hard to dance

    But only can lollop and brainge.

    September 10, 2018

  • The witch who was doc for the group

    Would steep an old napkin in soup.

    When spells went awry

    A broth of newt’s eye

    Would make a most excellent stupe.

    September 9, 2018

  • I’m welcome all over the town.

    The grownups invite a sit-down,

    But all the kids know me

    By my odd visnomy

    As Donald the Dangerous clown.

    September 8, 2018

  • A hapax legomenon.

    September 7, 2018

  • A scholar cries, “This is mere gabble!”

    Another says, “Nay, it is babble!”

    The conference is shattered

    And comity battered

    In a lexicographical brabble.

    September 7, 2018

  • The annals record not a precedent

    For comments like these of our president.

    Some language was salty

    Or grammar was faulty

    But none so obtuse or maledicent.

    September 6, 2018

  • Oh, how many evils arise

    When citizens blinker their eyes,

    When allegiance to fact

    Is a perilous act

    And seeking the truth an emprise?

    September 5, 2018

  • See Prometheus.

    September 4, 2018

  • I like my cheesecake framboise-y,

    A scarlet and ivory jamboree

    The cake’s at its best

    When liberally blessed

    With berries all lushly cramoisie.

    September 4, 2018

  • He listens to boring accounts

    Of places he cannot pronounce,

    Hiding incomprehension

    With feigned close attention

    And solemn executive frounce.

    September 3, 2018

  • There once was a lady named Maggie

    Pathetically shriveled and saggy.

    Bag ladies aren’t keen

    On careful hygiene

    So Maggie was savagely caggy.

    September 2, 2018

  • Our Ernest loves words like calcanea

    And other such strange miscellanea.

    It’s the wordy’s affliction,

    A nerdy addiction,

    A potent, though weird, methomania.

    Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit

    September 1, 2018

  • There once was a spokesman named Ziegler,

    A famously flexible wriggler.

    While still a mere youth

    He bargained with truth

    And proved a most obstinate higgler.

    August 31, 2018


  • We fear for the health of democracy

    And Sanders decries our plutocracy,

    But fears in me linger

    From his wagging finger

    That Bernie supports pedantocracy.

    August 30, 2018

  • alexz has a list called Glitched definitions.

    August 30, 2018

  • The Pharma Bro’s free market ultraism,

    Though seen quite rightly as vulturism,

    Was deemed unassailable

    So crimes that were jailable

    Were found to obtain a result in prison.

    August 29, 2018

  • They study the lore and phonetics

    And delve into tribal memetics,

    But some, sick of prying,

    Are given to lying

    To tart up the ethnopoetics.

    August 28, 2018

  • We often respond rather comically

    To sounds we produce anatomically.

    Our rumbles and farts

    Suggest martial arts

    And sometimes a new gigantomachy.

    August 27, 2018

  • The “blimp” was a British wry tease:

    A Trump in his bright tighty-whities.

    Onlookers were cheerful,

    The Trump, though, was tearful,

    Afflicted with gross tympanites.

    August 26, 2018

  • Though wise men maintain it’s a verity

    That rudeness and insult are ferity,

    With those who won’t see

    What’s plain villainy

    The sages permit some asperity.

    August 25, 2018

  • Despite our indignant chorus

    Polluters still mock or ignore us

    And now heaps of swill

    On Capitol Hill

    Grow fouler and more cacodorous.

    August 24, 2018

  • My muse is some days on hiatus

    Affecting my lit’rary status.

    In those trying times

    I recycle rhymes

    And bide as a passive literatus.

    August 23, 2018

  • Ty, zuzu!

    August 22, 2018

  • The kindly ones look for a way

    To soothe me on my natal day:

    “To tally each dawn’s

    A foolish metewand!

    You’re old as you feel,” so they say.

    August 22, 2018

  • A yearning heart and dramaturgy

    Support effective hierurgy.

    A conscience that’s raw

    And penitent’s awe

    Combine in solemn synergy.

    August 21, 2018

  • Welcome aboard, klezmania.

    August 20, 2018

  • The voters abide a mild bounderism

    But will they endure outright scoundrelism?

    Mistaken election

    May bring on reflection

    And maybe a morsel of sounder wisdom.

    August 20, 2018

  • Accustomed to shortage and paucity

    The poor folk have great curiosity:

    They cannot divine

    Just why the rich whine.

    What ails those in pecuniosity?

    August 19, 2018

  • Maternal caresses and hugs come

    To even the humblest of bugdom,

    For like every other

    A worm has a mother

    Who cares not her offspring are ugsome.

    August 18, 2018

  • Dilute not your umbrage with snark!

    Your bite should be worse than your bark.

    The highest of dudgeon

    Befits the curmudgeon,

    Who’s called to be arch aristarch.

    August 17, 2018

  • The owl and the robin do differ thus:

    The chirper finds darkness somniferous,

    The nocturnal owl

    Is out on the prowl,

    Aloft when the sky is stelliferous.

    August 16, 2018

  • Thanks, zuzu.

    August 15, 2018

  • Not crooked perhaps - only gently bent,

    Charming withal, and a friendly gent.

    The lobbyist’s wiles

    Are favors and smiles

    Enabling new friends be consentient.

    August 15, 2018

  • Some suffer a boring monogamy

    Afflicted by torpid monotony,

    But others think strife

    Twixt husband and wife

    Should offer exciting monomachy.

    August 14, 2018

  • Historically sailors would hark

    To foghorns that blast in the dark,

    But these days they heed

    The GPS feed

    And don’t even need a seamark.

    August 13, 2018

  • Stargazing has often a quality

    Of mystic but harmless frivolity,

    But don’t laugh or jibe

    At that solemn tribe

    That practices genethlialogy.

    August 12, 2018

  • Accept, if you will, a most odd apology:

    I misapprehended this codicology;

    It’s for ancient writing,

    Not haddock and whiting,

    Nor matters affecting our cod ecology.

    August 11, 2018

  • You can’t say the man’s a blindsider

    Or dodgy evasive sidewinder.

    He comes with lips open

    And stubby hands gropin’.

    A venomous preening highbinder.

    August 10, 2018

  • Priscilla affirmed she would marry

    Young Boris if he were less hairy.

    He waxed and he plucked;

    No oyster once shucked

    Ever glistened more pallid and glairy.

    August 9, 2018

  • We shouldn’t be shy or myopic

    But yogurt’s a sensitive topic,

    For effluents leak

    To make the stuff “Greek”

    And all local ponds are eutrophic.

    August 8, 2018

  • Ensure that you’re trademark compliant

    Promoting your company’s giant.

    It‘s copyright folly

    To say “green and jolly”

    So boast that he’s vernal and riant.

    August 7, 2018

  • Watch out for that little Jack Horner

    With plums on his thumbs in the corner.

    When Muffet’s astray

    From curds and her whey

    He’ll snatch ‘em, the wretched wee sorner.

    August 6, 2018

  • A gothic estate needs a proper lawn,

    A pond in the shape of an octagon,

    A statue or two,

    A ruin to view

    And one mysterious monopteron.

    August 5, 2018

  • Cambridge English Dictionary:

    short form of dare(s) not:

    I daren't tell him - he'll be so angry.

    August 4, 2018

  • Though hearts are swiftly beguiled

    By orphans that ought to be wild

    The zookeeper daren’t

    Become alloparent,

    Attached to a beast like a child.

    August 4, 2018

  • Some shanty the tired whalers sang

    To work till the dinner bell rang.

    On days spent at flense

    It made perfect sense

    To dine on a chowder of krang.

    August 3, 2018

  • Deluded, resentful, they throng to see

    His orgy of bombastic bonhomie.

    The whole horde agrees

    To be worker bees

    And strive in the hive of plutonomy.

    August 2, 2018

  • The rules of the local infirmary

    Ban pets as too pesky and murmurry.

    My bucket of worms

    Just silently squirms

    So they let me hold on to my wormery.

    August 1, 2018

  • His style he supposes evincive

    Of glories of sultans and princes,

    But gilding is crass

    In alloy with brass,

    Evincing but snickers and winces.

    July 31, 2018

  • By trumpets woodwinds and trombone

    A great deal of music is blown,

    And riding those gusts

    In dartings and thrusts

    Are flights of the sweet chordophone.

    July 30, 2018

  • I offer a free hermeneutic;

    The difficult work is propaedeutic;

    But, competence gained,

    Then freedom’s attained

    And learning thereafter is therapeutic.

    July 29, 2018

  • There once was a fellow named Stegman

    Who worked as a butter and egg man,

    But having grown chary

    Of chickens and dairy

    Embarked on a life as a yeggman.

    July 28, 2018

  • When feeling depressed and solitary

    Recall that our blessing can vary.

    Do not make life’s measure

    The getting of treasure;

    Embrace simple joys of the proletary.

    July 27, 2018

  • See also aiglet and aglet.

    July 26, 2018

  • Attachments to clothes in most cases

    Will stab you in sensitive places,

    However a tag well met

    Is the wee aigulette

    That stiffens the end of your laces.

    July 26, 2018

  • Thank you, zuzu.

    July 25, 2018

  • An internal metronome swings in us

    And insight when rhymed aright clings to us,

    But flexion is key

    In lines four and three

    For they are the limerick’s ginglymus.

    July 25, 2018

  • milquetoast

    July 24, 2018

  • milk of human kindness

    July 24, 2018

  • Our Ernest, despite his avidity,

    Eschews any careless rapidity.

    Like rarest of fungi

    With lips and his tongue he

    Will savor each new word’s sapidity.

    Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit

    July 24, 2018

  • You mean it’s not an eight-sided onion?

    July 24, 2018

  • The words in such dull iteration

    Are not even tergiversation.

    “There was no collusion”

    In witless profusion

    Is no more than verbigeration.

    July 23, 2018

  • In this so disconsolate season,

    When fear tries to rule over reason,

    Is caesaropapism

    Refreshing escapism

    Compared to the rumors of treason.

    July 22, 2018

  • Mix tallow and oil and then rub in

    Till fingers are worn to a nubbin.

    To make your boot leather

    Impervious to weather

    You add lots of sweat to your dubbin.

    July 21, 2018

  • Oh, what did that yellow slip presage;

    A baleful or jubilant message?

    What‘s won or what’s lost

    To merit the cost

    Of telegram’s costly expressage?

    July 20, 2018

  • Lucky for your sister. From what I read if he had taken offense he might have unholstered his scrotum, enfolded her in it and carried her off to Tanukiville.

    July 19, 2018

  • My loaf is a shame and a woe

    But means to save face now I know,

    Not slighting the bread

    But praising instead

    By claiming it’s called fricandeau.

    July 19, 2018

  • Achieving the state of aged adult

    These chances are few to exult:

    I need not assent

    To strict rules of Lent

    All thanks to the papal indult.

    July 18, 2018

  • The old man was shriveled and wizened,

    The lassie however was lithesome.

    I’ve heard it reported

    The ways she contorted

    Brought on a discreet microseism.

    July 17, 2018

  • Thanks, zuzu. Can we make this a regular date?

    July 16, 2018

  • In appearance it’s comically kookie -

    Both mutt and raccoon - a tanuki!

    A gigantic scrotum

    Is his magic totem.

    That’s fable but still pretty spooky.

    July 16, 2018

  • I’d rather be elsewhere than stay

    In caverns where nightmares can prey.

    It’s foolish, not brave

    To enter a cave

    Unless you’ve been shown a manway.

    July 15, 2018

  • The tasks to support agriculture

    Include an unglamorous dull chore,

    As most men will find

    That milling’s a grind,

    Relieved by receipt of the multure.

    July 14, 2018

  • Isadora, oldtimers allege,

    Would dance in a cloud of Arpège,

    Adorned all the while

    With only a smile

    And diaphanous wisps of barege.

    July 13, 2018

  • Your status you may well enhance

    By carefully casual dalliance.

    The rich and the great

    Are stylishly late,

    And greater the longer the tarriance.

    July 12, 2018

  • The Word of the Day definitions for “pugging” omit one that I find intriguing. Both GNU and the CDC suggest “thieving” as a synonym. Although its normal use is as an adjective it works just fine as a noun.

    Whenever not smugly flag hugging

    He’s giving the gov’mint a mugging.

    He’s snug with rich thugs

    Who buzz thick like bugs

    Engorged with the glut of their pugging.

    July 11, 2018

  • The job of enclosing and snugging

    Needs patience for doing the pugging,

    A good eye and feel

    To make clay congeal

    And strength for the tedious lugging.

    July 11, 2018

  • If you should be born a narwhal

    And find it won’t suit you at all,

    Apply to a shaman

    To make you a cayman

    Or other exotic nahual.

    July 10, 2018

  • The landscape’s a bleak desolation,

    Too grim to bear long contemplation.

    A guy could do worse

    Than write silly verse

    While giving the news aversation.

    July 9, 2018

  • I sought the report and I’ve read it -

    Our genes are now subject to edit.

    Disrupting concinnity

    And delicate synteny

    Might serve as a reason to dread it.

    July 8, 2018

  • In heartwarming tableaux of old

    The prospector pans for his gold;

    The motorized trommel

    Is now what is normal,

    A scene that leaves dreaming hearts cold.

    July 7, 2018

  • Milady likes tea that’s served punctual

    With certain wee treats that are munchable.

    All implements furnished

    Are brilliant and burnished,

    Laid out in a pattern quincuncial.

    July 6, 2018

  • It could be a slavish faux Putinism

    Or native enjoyment of brutalism,

    Or weak leader’s dread

    Of being gainsaid

    That fosters his crude absolutism.

    July 5, 2018

  • The gestures are false but methodical:

    Flag hugging is crudely symbolical;

    His staging quite brims

    With anthems and hymns

    And all of it mock patriotical.

    July 4, 2018

  • Good people be silent and hark ye!

    Believe not the goblin’s malarkey!

    He’ll wheedle and flatter

    But words do not matter.

    He means to construct an autarchy.

    July 3, 2018

  • Many years ago I saw a notice of a talk to be given at MIT: “Viscous Vortices on the Vertical Verges of Variable Velocity Vessels.” I did not attend but I have wondered since if the speaker had anything substantive to say on the subject or just could not resist alliteration.

    July 3, 2018

  • Very generous, bilby, thank you. I am grateful not only for the compliment but for reassurance that I am not alone out here. Where is everybody?

    July 2, 2018

  • A bon vivant might play a new card

    Affecting a flashy foulard,

    But such fashions fade

    As soon as they’re played

    Replaced by the latest boutade.

    July 2, 2018

  • Impoverishment is a damn nuisance

    But think of these words in a new sense:

    A currency which is

    A transfer of riches -

    A free and renewable two cents.

    July 1, 2018

  • To live in Hong Kong can be dicey -

    The housing is terribly pricey.

    The rents are so bloated

    That often they’re quoted

    In carats per month or in sycee.

    July 1, 2018

  • The place was a burning solarium

    So, wilting, he waved his orarium;

    Thus Caesar conveyed

    His need for some shade,

    And slaves trotted out the velarium.

    June 30, 2018

  • The eugenics project resulted in

    An unsatisfactory cultigen.

    Reversing bold plans

    They bred Yankees fans

    Instead of a species of ultra-men.

    June 29, 2018

  • In whom is such consummate talent seen,

    Picasso perhaps, or in Balanchine?

    What chef can impart

    That tone of high art

    We seek in the glistening galantine?

    June 28, 2018

  • When efforts at mending and wrappage

    Can’t hide your tin lizzie is crappage

    Then turn in your honey

    And take the blood money

    To buy a new friend with the scrappage.

    June 27, 2018

  • The harried mom desperately reasoned

    Her brat needed mush highly seasoned.

    The trick was a help;

    It silenced her whelp

    By stifling his cries in his weasand.

    June 26, 2018

  • A taste for the market stampede

    And years in the bourse may well lead

    To regal facility

    For rustic gentility

    At the court of your summer bastide.

    June 25, 2018

  • Now some people browse for a swap

    And others use Paypal to shop,

    But oniomania

    Infects certain crania

    And online they never need stop.

    June 24, 2018

  • Antiquity’s singers were apt to tell

    Of ominous blooms of asphodel.

    Persephone’s bower

    Was full of this flower,

    Bred of the netherworld’s sapropel.

    June 23, 2018

  • Big Bird, on a new diet slant,

    Suggests that his pal eat an ant,

    But Ol’ Snuffleupagus

    Is not myrmecophagous.

    He tries to comply but he can’t.

    June 22, 2018

  • For pessimists life has gone dark

    Lit only by danger’s faint spark.

    Expressions of joy

    Serve but to annoy

    A sufferer shrouded in cark.

    June 21, 2018

  • When striving and troublesome quest abate

    And days of diversion and rest await,

    I’ll work to no goal

    Nor pay labor’s toll,

    For starting tomorrow I’ll estivate.

    June 20, 2018

  • It pleases us all to play critic

    And make our assessments acidic.

    Oh, let us not hasten

    To cavil and chasten

    But walk with the other a bittock.

    June 19, 2018

  • There’s many a line to be drawn

    To finish my chiliagon.

    With pencils and rules

    And paper my tools

    With patience I’ll see you anon.

    June 18, 2018

  • Warhol had an ingenious plan

    To paint a tomato soup can.

    He knew to expect hype

    And many an ectype.

    Call Andy a shrewd businessman.

    June 17, 2018

  • We plan, we prepare and we scheme

    Constructing the future we dream,

    But by nature’s kindness

    We’re sheltered by blindness

    And spared the despair of foregleam.

    June 16, 2018

  • Its origin in Middle English raten etc. is thoroughly documented above.

    June 15, 2018

  • The cries made in old Pomerania

    Are echoed in our Pennsylvania.

    The party that’s out

    Still gives a great shout

    Of outrage at such squandermania.

    June 15, 2018

  • The goblin in triumph has stunned the nation;

    Let’s pray that his tenure is one duration.

    What words can convey

    Our fear and dismay?

    Oh dammit! And bother! And thunderation!

    June 14, 2018

  • Philosophers routinely postulate

    And pundits are prone to prognosticate

    But if you’d be blessed

    A twitcher knows best,

    Whose passion is always to auspicate.

    June 13, 2018

  • To those who will beg to be friend

    The goblin may well condescend.

    A different matter

    Are those who won’t flatter

    And these he is pleased to vilipend.

    June 12, 2018

  • Should friends be inclined to support

    Or join in the trumpish cohort

    Then make it your chore

    To strongly deplore,

    To reason, implore and dehort.

    June 11, 2018

  • The mayfly begins life at dawn,

    By sundown the wee beast is gone,

    And all it desires

    Before it expires

    Is love with a friendly ephemeron.

    June 10, 2018

  • It would be shellfish of me to want more praise.

    June 10, 2018

  • When high tide arrives they get moister,

    Then quahogs and cherrystones roister,

    But twice-daily frolics

    Of mud-dwelling mollusks

    Are spurned by the dignified oyster.

    June 9, 2018

  • Oh, why must her tongue unduly wag

    And flail like a scourge to cruelly nag?

    Her chosen life path

    Is unbridled wrath

    To hector and chide and bullyrag.

    June 8, 2018

  • Also see comments at cunctatory.

    June 7, 2018

  • Old Aesop once in drunken glory

    Concocted a famed but bunkum story

    Of rabbit and turtle.

    A tale ever fertile

    That comforts today the cunctatory.

    Also see comments at cunctative.

    June 7, 2018

  • What praise has this rivulet due it

    That dies if the dew not renew it?

    But readers are fickle

    And even this trickle

    Gains charm if you call it a spruit.

    June 6, 2018

  • Misspelling of putschist?

    June 6, 2018

  • Be patient with Malcolm the malcontent.

    It’s not that he’s always recalcitrant,

    But suffers from bouts

    Of worries and doubts

    That make him reluctant and vacillant.

    June 5, 2018

  • The stirring in regions chthonic

    And warming of earth are synchronic

    As seeds grow and flourish

    To comfort and nourish,

    Encouraged by skills geoponic.

    June 4, 2018

  • See comments at clough.

    June 3, 2018

  • Aren’t gorge and ravine quite enough

    For valleys and such hollowed stuff?

    Barranca and canyon

    Don’t need a companion.

    I think we’ll dispense with this “clough”.

    See comments at barranca.

    June 3, 2018

  • When buzzards descend and alight

    Then plutocrats take an affright

    And fiercely abjure

    All Satan’s allure.

    At Hell’s looming gate they’re attrite.

    June 2, 2018

  • Now sturdy’s an interesting word.

    I note it derives from a bird.

    I see how the thrush

    Could seem like a lush

    But why did they call it a turd?

    June 1, 2018

  • The worshippers, eager and gleeful,

    Now thronging their civic cathedral

    In service of sport

    Send prayers of support

    To heaven from temples hypaethral.

    June 1, 2018

  • Adverbial form of the verb ‘to snarf’.

    May 31, 2018

  • Ahoy there, puyan!

    May 31, 2018

  • madmouth, I am pleased to have tickled you. (In a purely notional sense, of course. No touching involved. Kept my hands in my pockets.)

    May 31, 2018

  • Oh, stranger, I ask have you seen

    Her eyes, so sublimely serene?

    The depth of both gem

    And sky is in them,

    Cerulean yet lazuline!

    May 31, 2018

  • There once was a drunk named McCarthy

    Consuming all alcohol snarfly.

    His limit once struck

    He’d quickly upchuck

    Sustaining his drinking bouts barfly.

    May 30, 2018

  • The scholars arrived in a schooner

    And drinking began all the sooner

    For, as sailors will,

    They fired up the still

    And raised up their first nipaluna.

    May 30, 2018

  • But given Australia’s colorful history I am sure that in time the origin of “nipaluna” will be construed to be a politer version of “sip-o’-moonshine.”

    May 30, 2018

  • In Scotland they claim there is charm in it

    And doctors do say there’s no harm in it,

    But eating of haggis

    I’m certain would gag us

    Because we’re alarmed by the tharm in it.

    May 30, 2018

  • The victory sure was suspicious,

    Defying the voters’ clear wishes,

    Not obvious fraud

    But obscurely odd,

    Obtained by some means obreptitious.

    May 30, 2018

  • Mike Cohen’s a slippery twister

    Who loves to be thought a slick fixer.

    At law he’s the dreg,

    A shabby jackleg,

    But passably good as a trickster.

    May 29, 2018

  • *The monkey doffs his hat,*

    May 28, 2018

  • The judge with his voice all a-tremor

    Ordered the witness’s hem lower.

    Miniskirts are distractions

    In criminal actions

    And get you adjudged a contemnor.

    May 28, 2018

  • It’s either foolhardy or brave

    To capture the sense of enclave

    While leaving in place

    The lexical space

    To service its shadow, exclave.

    See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclave_and_exclave

    May 27, 2018

  • It’s boring to be incognito,

    Celebrity, though, gets my veto.

    Expose with great care

    The parts you will share;

    You should be a work of sgraffito.

    May 26, 2018

  • A Christmas card list has a quality

    At first of good cheer and frivolity.

    By decades that column

    Grows more and more solemn

    And ossifies into necrology.

    May 25, 2018

  • The lumberjacks lay down their peaveys

    And gypsies dispose of their tea leaves.

    Good sense is forsaken

    And liberties taken

    While Erin consorts with the Kiwis.

    May 24, 2018

  • Conversing in mode quodlibetical

    My contrary friend is heretical.

    In subsequent talks

    He’s more orthodox

    To savor all joys antithetical.

    May 24, 2018

  • See bezel.

    May 24, 2018

  • On lonely roads nothing is rarer than

    That stranger should prove a samaritan,

    So pray he’s a blellum

    Or at worst a skellum

    But never a prey hunting cateran.

    May 23, 2018

  • It‘s no term of slighting disdain;

    Like “out of this world” it’s no stain.

    Without taint of “boring”

    But downright adoring,

    It’s good to be ultramundane!

    May 22, 2018

  • A noble aspiration. Good luck.

    May 21, 2018

  • Up high in the Andes the folks say

    The chewing of coca is ok.

    It’s sovereign cure

    For pains of the poor

    And proof against dreaded soroche.

    May 21, 2018

  • The shy matador’s bright idea

    For wooing the haughty Maria

    Was a sweet serenade

    For that tease of a maid,

    Backed up by his loyal cuadrilla.

    May 20, 2018

  • I think a serial comma is fussy, foolish and redundant.

    May 19, 2018

  • See comments at expunction.

    May 19, 2018

  • A comma should serve a clear function

    Not pester a healthy conjunction.

    At the end of a list

    It need not exist.

    I call for its lasting expunction.

    See serial comma.

    May 19, 2018

  • I have added forensic but I realize he (she?) may be the relative nobody wants to acknowledge. If he is unwelcome I will return to cast him into outer darkness. (If I can figure out how to delete an item frm a list.)

    May 18, 2018

  • Ma Nature conducts such a merry dance

    Ingeniously fostering variance,

    With tectonic drift

    And mountains’ uplift

    Deployed in the cause of vicariance.

    May 18, 2018

  • I like finding rhymes recherché,

    The fanciful, rare or outré,

    But often I flail

    To little avail

    And serve up a soup réchauffé.

    May 18, 2018

  • Suggestive are names on the rig:

    They drill till the gusher is big;

    A roustabout’s lusty

    But (read it and trust me),

    The big score’s a toolpusher’s gig.

    May 17, 2018

  • Do you think I ought to charge a rate per rhyme or just hold limericks hostage?

    May 17, 2018

  • Something here is sadly awry.

    May 16, 2018

  • Oh, Plato would weep if he was to see

    The state of our current democracy,

    Our meanest and least

    At hubristic feast

    And mocking poor starving sophrosyne.

    Pronunciation note: so-FROZ-a-nee

    May 16, 2018

  • To minimize spoiling and lossage

    The butcher stacks shrewdly his sausage.

    The look is unkempt

    But fashioned to tempt,

    The oldest protruding like bossage.

    May 15, 2018

  • A rock speeding in from infinity

    Can slow in the stellar vicinity

    And give up deep space

    For the solar embrace

    To circle in languid concinnity.

    May 14, 2018

  • It calms the old girl when she’s jumpy

    And cheers her on days when she’s grumpy.

    The proper elixir

    For all that afflicts her

    Is pomaceous nectar called scrumpy.

    May 13, 2018

  • We drank from the shell of a nautilus

    Till skolion wearied the lot of us

    Then made dirty jests

    And bragged of conquests

    And spent the last wine playing cottabus.

    May 12, 2018

  • The winter left us melancholic

    But May arrives bright and bucolic -

    Cavorting and gambols

    And giggles in brambles

    And all sorts of innocent frolic.

    May 11, 2018

  • I liked the old comical fest that

    Included the conical dress hat

    And caldron a-stew

    With dark witches’ brew,

    Now banned at canonical esbat.

    May 11, 2018

  • "Deplorables" can mean the louche,

    The wicked man coarsely uncouth,

    Or simple unwise

    Who swallows his lies,

    The gullible, gaping gobemouche.

    May 10, 2018

  • Also called a taffy pull.

    https://pioneerthinking.com/old-fashioned-taffy-pull-party-how-to-host-your-own

    May 9, 2018

  • This virtual college of dance

    Will teach you to caper or prance:

    The gambol is wilder

    A tittup much milder.

    Cavorting might suit you, perchance?

    May 9, 2018

  • Young ladies whose morals are sloppy

    May yield to the call of the poppy.

    With that fatal taste

    Have lives gone to waste

    And heroine turned into taupie.

    May 9, 2018

  • Long gone is the beastly couture

    That wrapped up the swells in pellure.

    Farewell to the feathers

    And exotic leathers,

    Replaced now with sinless velure.

    May 8, 2018

  • Compare gangewifre.

    May 8, 2018

  • Compare attercop.

    May 8, 2018

  • One of the most memorable opening lines of any novel is that that begins Anthony Burgess’s Earthly Powers:

    "It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."

    This is in medias res with a vengeance.

    May 7, 2018

  • A yodel I figured had solely been

    A feature of regions tyrolean,

    But wine and a lyre

    I bet could inspire

    The Greeks to claim it’s a skolion.

    May 7, 2018

  • Les voyageurs of long, long ago

    Could carry but little cargo

    A fragile canoe,

    Held a musket or two,

    An axe and a handy barlow.

    May 6, 2018

  • When gravity’s dictates are followed

    The river finds rock that is hollowed.

    The miner’s will call it

    A damnable swallet,

    And live in the fear they’ll be swallowed.

    May 5, 2018

  • ruzuzu, you are a generous soul. I thank you.

    May 5, 2018

  • The prospect with horror does fill me!

    I don’t know where word nerds then will be.

    Why purge grace and wit?

    There’s little of it,

    Except in the postings of bilby.

    May 4, 2018

  • Because of severe tritanomaly

    I view my environs abnormally.

    You may think it crazy

    But critics still praise me

    No matter I paint so abominably.

    May 4, 2018

  • Compiling my beach reading queue

    I like an O’Brian or two.

    But swashbuckling numbers

    Disrupt my sweet slumbers -

    At bedtime verism will do.

    May 3, 2018

  • His tweeting’s vituperative art

    And close to his putative heart.

    Some spittle to pump it in

    The Trumpian sumpitan

    Then blowhard delivers his dart.

    May 2, 2018

  • The critics praise Pope only tepidly

    His work is too witty and echoey.

    His epics are mock

    So scholars still balk

    To classify any as epopee.

    May 1, 2018

  • Friar Fred was a snorer and snorter

    And brotherly tempers grew shorter.

    The last straw was farting;

    This led to the parting

    As Fred was expelled from the dortour.

    April 30, 2018

  • Do we have a word for the dread

    That pangolins lurk in the shed,

    Or spiny echidna

    Invade the exedra

    And cobras wait curled in the bed?

    April 29, 2018

  • The proud and committed marines

    All know what a leatherneck means.

    They cherish that name

    And combative fame

    They’ve earned as relentless gyrenes.

    April 28, 2018

  • Variety covers show biz

    And glories in tags like Les Mis.

    For such razmataz

    And verbal pizazz

    Just give the old rag a quick squizz.

    April 27, 2018

  • Uber in the Andes.

    April 27, 2018

  • See dress suit.

    April 27, 2018

  • The lumberjack loved his new mannequin

    And, oh, what a noisy shenanigan!

    The ecstatic cries

    And heartbreaking sighs

    That shivered the walls of his wanigan!

    April 26, 2018

  • Google and I got that allusion and enjoyed a very amusing Youtube video.

    April 25, 2018


  • Their scorn could hardly be blunter

    But insults or slights don’t affront her,

    A compliant tool

    Too ready to snool,

    And formerly known as tufthunter.

    April 25, 2018

  • This is a problem in that groupie does not rhyme with toady. Can we suppose an especially abject roadie?

    The measure of my knowledge of the culture of rock is probably a negative value. I am going to have to do some original thinking, unless of course the persuasive power of my application of roadie in this limerick has such influence that the common understanding of the word is changed. How long should I wait?

    April 25, 2018

  • Their scorn could hardly be blunter

    But insults or slights don’t affront her.

    In rock she’s a “roadie,”

    More generally - “toady,”

    And formerly known as tufthunter.

    Michael Quinion has an excellent discussion of this word at

    http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-tuf2.htm

    April 25, 2018

  • The pages of books can offer this:

    A personal mental Acropolis,

    A temple and shrine

    That’s uniquely mine

    Whose priest is the old bibliopolist.

    April 24, 2018

  • They prayed, “May the Good Lord endow us

    With a novice of kitchen skill prowess.”

    He answered their plea

    With well-fed Marie,

    The convent’s most welcome new vowess.

    April 23, 2018

  • A contortionist hailing from Ossipee

    Won fame as a great curiosity.

    From this we may know

    How far you can go

    With hard work and sheer flexuosity.

    April 22, 2018

  • Poor Bobby had thought it super cool

    To start up a geeky troop at school.

    Since scarcely a nerd

    Is drawn to a herd

    He rounded up only a groupuscule.

    April 21, 2018

  • I can find no adjectival version of quandary. To my surprise the OED reports that it can be used as a verb in the passive voice and supplies examples such as, “2007 www.rolandmc.com 23 Feb. (O.E.D. Archives) I'm seriously quandaried by the need to create and choose a MySpace name.”

    April 20, 2018

  • Oh, dear! Is this a bad sign for vegans?

    April 20, 2018

  • According to common report

    In Scotland the hunters consort

    To stalk with a wrinkle

    By forming a tinchel

    But still call the killing a sport.

    April 20, 2018

  • Dammit, bilby, I knew you were going to want more info since I know you speak Bahasa Malayu or its Indonesian cousin. The Malay origin was the first I found but now I cannot locate the specific source I used. I have found other sources that suggest the Arabic “ma’salaam” became the Malay “salang” and that British soldiers and sailors serving in Malaya in the 19th Century brought it home as “so long.”

    Now I’m going to be awake all night looking for that damned first google hit.

    April 19, 2018

  • The origins of “so long” are in fact mysterious. It’ suggested origins have been placed in Irish (slán), German (adieu so lange), Hebrew (shalom), Arabic (salaam). Also Malay, Norwegian and Swedish origins have been posited. An early appearance in print was in the poetry of Walt Whitman who reported that it was a common salutation among soldiers and sailors.

    See:

    https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/so-long-origin

    https://www.etymonline.com/word/so%20long

    and in many other places.

    April 19, 2018

  • That beverage that formerly seemed to me

    An ordinary serving of steaming tea

    Was nothing prosaic

    But apotropaic -

    A cup of mysterious haemony.

    April 19, 2018

  • Really? I’m always hearing people say, “I’m going to supernova my erupt.” Maybe it’s different in Tasmania.

    April 18, 2018

  • There’s nonsense and much mumbo-jumbo

    In this, our linguistical gumbo:

    In absence of rain,

    The pedants explain,

    You must call a rainbow a sunbow.

    April 18, 2018

  • He dances, who once was a stumbler.

    She sings, who once was a mumbler.

    The shy and unsure

    Find solace and cure

    Emboldened by wine and the tummler.

    April 17, 2018

  • Though life in a burrow may seem

    A low and impoverished scheme

    Some in a snooty vein

    Call it a souterrain,

    But all of us know it’s a weem.

    April 16, 2018

  • A swagman once pined for his Lydia

    Then met a koala much prettier.

    Their meeting was pleasant

    So he left a present,

    Now all of her tribe has chlamydia.

    April 15, 2018

  • The obvious question is, “Who has been screwing the koalas?” There is nothing those Aussies won’t stoop to. Next it’ll be the quokkas. Or (gasp!) bilbies!

    April 15, 2018

  • Recusants grown weary of dreading

    And cautious confessional treading

    Embraced Lutheranism

    As mere tutiorism

    When faced with the threat of beheading.

    April 15, 2018

  • Already a famed bayardere

    Mata Hari began a career

    Of laying and lying

    And diligent spying,

    A true multi-task pioneer.

    April 14, 2018

  • The woes of the gentry are multiplied;

    And country house pastimes are stultified.

    Laws new and obnoxious

    Protect the damn foxes,

    And limit the pleasures of vulpicide.

    April 13, 2018

  • Yes indeed, folks. The kettle is at a simmer and I am trying to keep the lid on. If anyone else would care to set this simpleton straight I would be happy for the help.

    April 12, 2018

  • smell fart.

    April 12, 2018

  • And, in an early precedent for the tv preacher/pitch man, each machine bore the onscription,

    Oh, sinner you need what I vend!

    Those talents you foolishly spend

    If spent here with me

    Will set your soul free

    To find the true way and amend!

    April 12, 2018

  • The pompous word tyrant’s been collared.

    In shame and confusion he hollered,

    ‘Oh, give me reprieve

    And I’ll give you leave

    To tolerate riff-raff like ‘schollard!’”

    April 12, 2018

  • Big Joe’s normal tone is a bellow;

    He shakes down the leaves with his “Hello!”

    His workplace is shared

    By the hearing impaired

    Who think him a perfect workfellow.

    April 12, 2018

  • Before there was genus and phylum

    Or God made adamic asylum,

    Before night and day

    Or man went astray,

    Preceding it all was the ylem.

    April 11, 2018

  • My dreams are torn by incursion

    Of hauntings in many a version.

    Tonight’s chilling flavor

    Was barking mad daeva,

    A taunting malevolent Persian.

    April 10, 2018

  • The Scot and the British cook quibble

    ‘bout tools used for stirring their nibble:

    The Scotsman will hurtle

    To call it a spurtle,

    The Briton steadfastly says thible.

    April 9, 2018

  • The old salt sits down with his dog

    And shares out his bread and his grog.

    They’re birds of a feather

    And, so long together,

    Alike in their tastes and phisog.

    April 8, 2018

  • The soda bread recipe lists

    Ingredients in gowpens and fists.

    So would you know how then

    To shape your own gowpen

    With palms that are joined at the wrists?

    April 7, 2018

  • The Donald thinks walls give protection

    From human or import infection.

    But what could be sillier

    Than this claustrophilia

    And love of such rigid erection?

    April 6, 2018

  • In morals he’s perfectly neuter,

    Self interest uniquely his tutor.

    Should sanctity buy us

    He’s publicly pious,

    In private an unabashed fouter.

    April 5, 2018

  • The critic is mentally nimble,

    Uncovering subtext and symbol,

    But given the chance

    Reads tales of romance -

    A thinking man’s indolent bimble.

    April 4, 2018

  • Inscape and instress are complementary concepts about individuality and uniqueness derived by Gerard Manley Hopkins from the ideas of the medieval philosopher Duns Scotus.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inscape_and_instress

    April 3, 2018

  • Inscape and instress are complementary concepts about individuality and uniqueness derived by Gerard Manley Hopkins from the ideas of the medieval philosopher Duns Scotus.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inscape_and_instress

    April 3, 2018

  • He raids the bird feeder all day

    And drives all the songbirds away;

    Then, trading his swagger

    For a corpulent stagger,

    He ponderously climbs to his drey.

    April 3, 2018

  • See Catherine wheel.

    April 3, 2018

  • Less pleasant than madmouth conceives,

    For Bertie disrupts and upheaves.

    For life that is stable

    He should, if he’s able,

    Obtain his narration from Jeeves.

    April 2, 2018

  • No storm makes a proud Frenchman snool

    No matter how windy and cruel.

    Courage, mon ami!

    With Gallic esprit

    Look cool in your boots and cagoule!

    April 2, 2018

  • I came across a list of Wodehousian words for drunk. Many are already in this list but the following are not: above par, rotten, groggy, ossified, tanked, illuminated, lit up like a Christmas tree, woozled.

    April 1, 2018

  • Per Bertie Wooster - drunk.

    April 1, 2018

  • Prepare your victorious maffick

    With every theatrical tactic,

    With lights and balloons

    And boisterous tunes

    And all of the arts scenographic.

    April 1, 2018

  • Terrain and the temperatures vary

    Explorers, though, knew what to carry.

    A well-equipped chap

    Expanding the map

    Kept booze in the long promptuary.

    March 31, 2018

  • Our appetites finally doom us;

    Our blood becomes fatty and grumous.

    The lesson thus learned

    Is painfully earned

    And wisdom is sadly posthumous.

    March 30, 2018

  • His friends ‘round his coffin all joked

    How much Froggy ate, drank and smoked.

    So squat and so stuggy

    Yet gleefully buggy,

    But none were surprised when he croaked.

    March 29, 2018

  • Though most think them tasteless and petulant

    His fans find his tweets are quite esculent

    They dine with delight

    On venom and spite

    And prize the most bitter and feculent.

    March 28, 2018

  • A gem in the rough by report,

    Was Ernest at Doubleday’s sport.

    His diamond exploit

    Though grew less adroit

    And Ernest’s career was a bort.

    Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit

    March 27, 2018

  • Prof. Husserl directs your attention

    To quite a confounding invention.

    He calls it noema,

    A psychic edema

    Inflating an act of intention.

    March 26, 2018

  • Dear bilby, you must have a heart!

    I will, for a friend, do my part.

    No matter how swollen

    I’ll tighten my colon

    And stifle the streperous fart.

    March 25, 2018

  • I’ve stalked them from dusk until dawn

    With middling success off and on:

    Some words to share rhythm

    And shape a merism;

    I’ve hunted them hither and yon.

    March 25, 2018

  • Or, ‘O faithless kin, my nemesis!’

    March 24, 2018

  • Could be misinterpreted as ‘our farts keep mornings noisy.’

    March 24, 2018

  • The Donald is best, he repeats,

    The best in his mind and his feats.

    To sift his battology

    At best is scatology

    Best sent to the pit of deceits.

    March 24, 2018

  • Courage, bilby! We’ve still got complimentarization, and complimentarizability to go.

    March 24, 2018

  • The sound of persistent sharp tapping

    Provoke us to know what is happening

    Flint flakes and a severed edge,

    The litter of debitage,

    Are signs a boy scout’s been caught knapping.

    March 23, 2018

  • Your typical nerd’s not ironic

    And rarely a geek is sardonic.

    The bytes and the bits

    Please literal wits

    That coin horrors like technotronic.

    March 22, 2018

  • His scalp has been twice overhauled

    But Donald insists he’s not bald.

    If such simple calvity

    Were solely his malady

    The world would be far less appalled.

    March 21, 2018

  • Now isn’t that bilby a nuisance. I do thank him, though I would represent the pronunciation as purr-RICK-a-pee.

    The audio pronunciations never seem to work on my iPad, where most composition gets done. I will be more wary in future.

    There once was a preacher in Chicopee

    Beset by severe insipidity.

    On Sundays he normally

    Abandoned his homily

    And served up a meal of pericope.

    March 21, 2018

  • Theologians tell us there’s hope

    Of limiting vile error’s scope.

    The good can endure

    With hearts that are pure

    And doses of strong pericope.


    This limerick left in place like a miscreant rotting on the gallows. Beware, ye hasty! (See above.)

    March 20, 2018

  • There’s many a callow young wit

    Who,watching one flutter and flit,

    Has spread titillation

    And naughty elation

    Announcing his love of a tit.

    March 20, 2018

  • I find crapulentus and comato-crapulose in the list but not crapulent, which is more common.

    March 19, 2018

  • He laughs at a bright toy balloon,

    And babbles a light joyous tune.

    So ends the adventure

    In childish dementia

    Of him who had been oyabun.

    March 19, 2018

  • How spooky the look the scene took -

    As eerie as woodland can look.

    Damp came to emblanch

    The trees, trunk and branch,

    And paint the bare copse in cranreuch.

    March 18, 2018

  • Natasha sounds good to me. This could be the Rocky and Bullwinkle effect.

    March 18, 2018

  • I’ve had some more thoughts on iconic names. I have been trying to think of women’s names that have the same uniquely identifying value as men’s names and I am having trouble. ‘Ivan’ can mean a generic Russian man but can ‘Svetlana’ mean a generic Russian woman or is it just the name of a specific Russian woman? If I tell a joke featuring ‘Pierre,’ ‘Alphonse,’ or ‘Gaston’ you now that he is a French stereotype but I don’t think the same is true of ‘Francoise’ or ‘Marianne,’ even though this last is an official symbol of the French nation.

    Is this an artifact of historic male supremacy or do women’s names just better permeate national boundaries? I know the Aussies have adopted the Irish ‘Sile’ (after demoting the initial uppercase letter) as ‘sheila,’ to mean a young woman. Is this still current? I don’t think it is used to mean a specifically Australian woman. I will be happy to be corrected in this assumption and enlightened by examples of nationally iconic women’s names.

    March 17, 2018

  • When Celia was angry with Richie

    Her vengeance was cleverly bitchy:

    She’d cook favorite dishes

    But (this part is vicious)

    The portions, though tasty, were titchy.

    March 17, 2018

  • Yes! I had forgotten about Jock. I have used that before when a single syllable would do. Hamish is very good too. I will file that one away. Since Erin McKean has such an abiding fondness for Scottish utterance I need to have some on the shelf.

    My friend Roo writes to tell me of the Aussie habit of addressing redheaded men as Bluey. I suppose this is akin to the custom of calling bald men Curly or large men Tiny. Is there a handy word or phrase for this convention?

    March 17, 2018

  • I have used ‘Sandy’ as a generic name for a Scotsman. A quick google search confirms that it has been so employed before. It is used in Caledonia as a diminutive of ‘Alexander’ and possibly some other more formal names. I used to use ‘Angus’ for this but now I have a grandnephew by that name so it feels awkward to attribute opinions, behaviors or attitudes to Angus.

    I can use ‘Ivan’ and all would recognize that I mean ‘a Russian,’ or ‘Guido’ and a generalized Italian would be understood. What might be some other generic names? Many years ago I resided in the Philippines and learned that the locals were happy to address all Americans as ‘Joe.’

    I have a correspondent in Perth who signs himself ‘Roo.’ There is a notorious Tasmanian who uses the handle ‘bilby.’ Is there a generic moniker for marsupials that we could apply to all Australians?

    March 17, 2018

  • The Scots are said to be froward

    But Sandy asserts it’s a foul word.

    It’s Sassenach sport

    A Scotsman can thwart

    Insisting it ought to be thraward.

    Note: The OED identifies this as a Scottish variation of ‘froward.’

    March 16, 2018

  • In France I once ate salami

    That whelmed me like a tsunami.

    I pray for an encore

    Of that rarest sapor,

    The deepest and finest umami.

    March 15, 2018

  • A hogan’s a nice house for two.

    A teepee or wigwam might do,

    But when cold and windy

    You need a dry quinzhee

    Or else find a vacant igloo.

    March 14, 2018

  • Ludmila’s taste lapses are frequent,

    Her judgment amiss or delinquent.

    For drama’s effect

    She’s tinsel bedecked

    And enters all slinkily clinquant.

    March 13, 2018

  • The old gent’s a bit of a rogue

    And knows that the occult’s in vogue,

    So ply him with toasts

    And he’ll talk of ghosts,

    Or fairies and such rich pishogue.

    As in all of the supplied usage examples, and contrary to the formal definitions, the word is used dismissively to mean superstitious nonsense.

    March 12, 2018

  • Now Big Oil’s determined to drill

    In waters that can’t risk a spill

    The poison is loosed on

    The delicate neustron

    To suffocate, wither and kill.

    March 11, 2018

  • Illusions might come from Fellini

    Or wonders from work of a genie,

    And in right condition

    The moon’s a magician,

    As witness the paraselene.

    March 10, 2018

  • Pronounced chich-iss-BEE-ism. It could serve as an onomatopoetic word for a sneeze.

    The definition calls for some background:

    cicisbeo – n. In Italy, since the seventeenth century, the name given to a professed gallant and attendant of a married woman; one who dangles about women.

    dangle – To hang loosely; be suspended so as to be swayed be the wind or any slight force.

    Hence To dance attendance; hover longingly or importunately, as for notice or favors: used of persons, with about or after: as, to dangle about a woman; to dangle after a great man.

    In Italy all’s in a tangle

    As gallantry’s got a new angle.

    It makes a wee schism

    In cicisbeism

    As men become objects of dangle.

    March 9, 2018

Show 200 more comments...

Comments for qms

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • Miss you. Big five line hugs going out to wherever you are.

    November 23, 2019

  • I’d been wondering, too. Such sad news.

    Thanks for letting us know, Erin.

    July 27, 2019

  • tears

    Truly a much-loved Wordnik. I noticed a limerick on chemotherapy a few months ago but I was afraid to ask.

    RIP qms.

    July 27, 2019

  • I am very sorry to share the news that qms passed away on the evening of July 4th, 2019. More information is available in his obituary, here.

    Quentin will be deeply missed here at Wordnik, and to honor his memory we are adopting the word limerick in his name, permanently.

    We are also planning a blog post to highlight some of Quentin's best-loved word-of-the-day limericks; if you'd like to suggest any to include, you can add those words to this list: best-of-qms-f3E-ECnAs3S (or just email them to us at feedback@wordnik.com).

    July 26, 2019

  • Long before your persistent brilliance we had sionnach. There are a couple of limericks on eckle-feckle that still make me laugh.

    November 2, 2018

  • ruzuzu, you are a generous soul. I thank you.

    May 5, 2018

  • Just stopping by to say your prowess with the limericks is astonishing. I am ever in awe.

    May 4, 2018

  • The Word of the Day limerick for July 27, 2017 is meant to be read in the context of the comment posted at logothete on September 4, 2014.

    June 27, 2017

  • Thank you, ruzuzu. Verse is not neccessary but your good wishes are much appreciated. I only wanted to acknowledge Erin's gesture and to prepare my excuses in advance in case I miss a day here and there.

    June 3, 2015

  • Dear qms,

    I'm sorry I haven't written a get-well verse for you yet. Everything I try to rhyme betrays my dislike of cars and drivers--and since most of the people I know happen to be drivers, I thought maybe I'd cool off for a bit.

    Get well soon,

    ruzuzu

    June 3, 2015

  • Did your vault parse the arc of a diver?

    Or a ballerina's poise: didst thou outstrive her?

    But forgive me this jest,

    I wish you and elbows my best,

    *shakes fist at said stupid driver*

    June 1, 2015

  • Kind Wordniks: In her generous verse of yesterday erinmckean referenced my injury, which could interfere with submissions to Wordnik. On my last bike ride, May 22 (alas, my last for some time I'm afraid) an inattentive driver cut in front of me, so

    My dismount was the handlebar vault - 
    A gracefully arcing somersault.
    An elbow twice broken
    And concussion betoken
    The boldness of that asphalt halt.

    Two days ago I had surgery to nail my funny bone back into place. Fortunately (or not - there are opinions) I have been able to continue limericizing. This is a tribute to Erin's helpfulness and the power of OCD.

    May 31, 2015

  • At Wordnik we are truly blessed

    To have, as lyricist, qms.

    Although a recent awkward injury

    may make his typing a bit gingery

    we still daily receive of his best.

    May 30, 2015

  • The annum revolves from last to next

    But yields no daily tempting text.

    Is there some curse

    On good-natured verse

    Or will 2015 be lexically hexed?

    January 1, 2015

  • Dear Wordniks my aim is to woo you
    To visit "community" if you choose to.
    Let not this hiatus
    Depress or abate us,
    Let's flock to the beckoning ruzuzu.

    December 25, 2014

  • Thanks, qms! I was thinking that in the meantime maybe we should just congregate on one of the word pages--community makes as much sense as any. See you there?

    December 24, 2014

  • I especially admire your last few limericks. Keep up the good work!

    December 15, 2014

  • By rights this should be posted on the account of the user lozonbeatty, but that account will soon be squished to wriggling flatness by the almighty thumb of erinmckean, if it has not already been so reduced. I post my comment here so that it will not be collateral damage.

    I was struck by the last few sentences of lozonbeatty’s message, that is, three or four sentences, depending on one’s inclination to generosity:

    I experience scorching soon after using the tablet. and that i sweat quite a bit .they explain to me it is because the tablet si performing for me. I m seriously pleased with this particular outcome.

    There is something of poetry and of perversion in these words. I had hoped that bilby might address this, but he is probably out snowshoeing, or whatever it is they do in the Australian Winter. I have not his gift for mock Spammish so I must resort to my native idiom to give lozonbeatty some advice:

    Anent your fiery fat pill story

    More testimony is obligatory.

    You should be testing

    Other ways of ingesting.

    Suppose you try suppository?

    July 3, 2014

  • On any page, scroll down to the bottom, then click on the Community link under News. That will take you to what we used to call 'the front page' of the site where you can see all the latest user comments (and some other stuff). Sometimes you'll see that a 'conversation' between frequent users is developing on a particular word.
    Doorbelling is also fine, we do that too.
    p.s. There should also be a Community link on the black bar at the top.

    January 1, 2014

  • You can comment on any word except the Word of the Day in the WotD section.

    Your double bracket theory is correct, you can make a clickable link to any word's page by doing that. Then just scroll down till you find the comment box.

    December 19, 2013

  • I seem to have managed to make everything a comment FOR qms ABOUT qms. What I would like to do is offer comment FROM qms about a word. I wonder if double brackets on a word such as hebetude would land me in a useful place.

    December 19, 2013

  • From 11/27/2013, hebetude

           Thanksgiving, 2013
    We dine this day on heaps of food,
    Then slump in sleepy lassitude.
    Sad bales of clothes
    Near comatose –
    Though conscious, sunk in hebetude.

    December 19, 2013

  • WotD for 12/06/2013, subnivean

                Snow Fleas
    To Winter they're not giving in
    To slumber in chilly oblivion.
    They cheerfully go
    Underneath the snow
    And, happy there, hop subnivean.

    December 19, 2013

  • I have encountered enough success at posting a comment to look back a bit for other Word of the Day offerings that I have limericized. My skills as an archivist are weak, but I have found a couple.

    From 12/11/2013, cete

    "Coitus" supplies a word for "mate;"

    A batch of badgers it names "cete."

    It could be fun to view

    What those badgers do

    If, like words from roots, they proliferate.

    December 19, 2013

  • From 12/05/2013, morosoph

    The lit'ry world may haughtily scoff

    And judge the writer in some way "off,"

    But a limericist's tools

    Are the insights of fools.

    The form is the art of the morosoph.

    December 19, 2013

  • You can comment on the word cacchinate, though not on the Word Of The Day entry which is in a different part of the site.

    December 18, 2013

  • the meter is funky - a bit to the left of the limerick
    I like it!

    December 18, 2013