A Balliol rhyme is a doggerel verse form with a distinctive metre. It is a quatrain, having two rhyming couplets (rhyme scheme ), each line having four beats. They are written in the voice of the named subject and elaborate on that person's character, exploits or predilections.
The form is associated with, and takes its name from, Balliol College, Oxford.
A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually the exact same phonemes) in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of rhyming (perfect rhyming) is consciously used for a musical or aesthetic effect in the final position of lines within poems or songs. More broadly, a rhyme may also variously refer to other types of similar sounds near the ends of two or more words. Furthermore, the word rhyme has come to be sometimes used as a shorthand term for any brief poem, such as a nursery rhyme or Balliol rhyme.
