doggerel
Americanadjective
noun
noun
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comic verse, usually irregular in measure
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( as modifier )
a doggerel rhythm
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nonsense; drivel
Etymology
Origin of doggerel
Explanation
We're not sure why poor dogs always seem to get used to describe something really dreadful, but it's the case with doggerel — meaning irregularly rhyming, really bad poetry, usually comic in tone and fit only for dogs. Sometimes doggerel has a non-critical meaning: plenty of popular comic poets (like Lewis Carroll or any limerick inventor) had no aim to make great art, just great light verse, and they succeeded brilliantly. They were masters of doggerel. But pity the earnest highbrow poet like the immortal Scotsman William McGonagall whose doggerel was so bad his audience frequently pelted him with eggs and rotting vegetables. Now his poetry was only fit for the dogs.
Vocabulary lists containing doggerel
The Vocabulary.com Top 1000
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Poetry: Genres
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And Then There Were None
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Like much of Boston, it goes back to the Brahmins, the elite caste of the city, among whom, according to the doggerel, “The Lowells talk only to Cabots, and the Cabots talk only to God.”
From Barron's ● May 1, 2026
For 15 years, he wrote a long-form narrative every three weeks for the New Yorker; he’s also written shorter reported pieces, comic sketches and doggerel for the Nation, Time and elsewhere.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 13, 2024
In a letter to the West Sussex County Times, a critic resorted to doggerel to denounce Knepp’s “ragwort shame, spread like the plague, and who’s to blame?”
From The Guardian ● Feb. 25, 2020
David Orr writes eloquent, amusing and circuitously disapproving commentary on the retching doggerel by Charles Bukowski, whose reputation far exceeds his literary accomplishments.
From New York Times ● Mar. 29, 2019
As she passed the mantelpiece, she looked up at the framed doggerel.
From "And Then There Were None" by Agatha Christie
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
