Lim·er·ick  (l ĭm ər- ĭk, l ĭm r ĭk)
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A city of southwest Ireland on the Shannon River estuary. It was an important Norse settlement in the 9th and 10th centuries and was taken by the English in the late 12th century. |
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2020 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
lim·er·ick  (l ĭm ər- ĭk)
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n. A light humorous, nonsensical, or bawdy verse of five usually anapestic lines with the rhyme scheme aabba, in which the first, second, and fifth lines are in trimeter, and the third and fourth lines are in dimeter.
[After Limerick.] |
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2020 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices
Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:
Indo-European Roots
Semitic Roots
The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.
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