A limerick is a five-line poem that is intended to be amusing. The first, second, and fifth lines must be seven to ten syllables long, rhyming, and with the same linguistic rhythm. The third and fourth lines should only contain five to seven syllables each, and they should also rhyme and have the same rhythm. These two lines make up the complete limerick. It is very common for limericks to have more than five or six lines. Most limericks consist of twelve lines equal in length, but some are made up of thirteen or fourteen lines. Since a line of poetry contains about seventy words, this means that a typical limerick is composed of approximately eight hundred words. The form of the limerick makes it easy to add more lines: just start the next one while still thinking of something funny to say about the last one. This is why most limericks have more than five lines. Looking at the limerick above, you can see that it has seven lines of poetry. This means that there are twenty-one ways to rearrange the words in the limerick so that it becomes longer. This would make the first line longer by one word, so it would now be seven letters long instead of six.