crambo

American  

[kram-boh] / ˈkræm boʊ /

noun

plural

cramboes

1. a game in which one person or side must find a rhyme to a word or a line of verse given by another.

2. inferior rhyme.

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crambo British  

/ ˈkræmbəʊ /

noun

1. a word game in which one team says a rhyme or rhyming line for a word or line given by the other team

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Etymology

Origin of crambo

First recorded in 1600–10; earlier crambe < Latin crambē repetīta “cabbage reheated, re-served,” a phrase used in Juvenal's “Seventh Satire” (“Reheated cabbage kills teachers”) in reference to unimaginative writing, from Greek krámbē “cabbage”

Example Sentences

The portraits on the sordid walls were very like the crambo in the minds of ordinary men—very like the motley pictures of the Famous hung up in your parlor, O my Public!

From Harper's New Monthly Magazine No. XVI.?September, 1851?Vol. III. by Various

After it, the whole family played at 'dumb crambo.'

From The Two Sides of the Shield by Yonge, Charlotte Mary

Things look their most unexpected, masquerade as other things, get queer unintelligible allegoric meanings, leaving you to guess what it all means, a constant dumb crambo of trees, flowers, animals, houses, and moonlight.

From Limbo and Other Essays To which is now added Ariadne in Mantua by Lee, Vernon

Brian was good at everything—charades, clumps, consequences, dumb crambo.

From The Golden Calf by Braddon, M. E. (Mary Elizabeth)

Nicholls, "cost £737 2s., poor Settle receiving £10 for his crambo verses."

From Old and New London Volume I by Thornbury, Walter