Definition mission: A rhyming limerick for each English word
Posted December 28, 2017 10:47 am.
Last Updated December 28, 2017 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
One man’s joke has become his mission: to give each word a rhyming definition.
Chris Strolin was teasing English buffs in an online forum years ago when he said the dictionary would be greatly improved if definitions were written as five-line limericks. Then he decided to try it for real.
The Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form — or OEDILF (OH-dilf) for short — has published more than 97,000 rhyming definitions since Strolin started the online dictionary in 2004. He expects to reach limerick No. 100,000 sometime in 2018.
Even with help from roughly 1,000 contributing writers, Strolin’s limerick dictionary is nowhere near finished. It currently ends in the Gs at the word “gizzard.”
Strolin hopes his grandchildren — or perhaps their kids — will finish the Zs.
