What does crambo mean?
Crambo is a traditional word game in which one player offers a word or line and another must respond with improvised verse that rhymes with it, often under time pressure or as a penalty for failure. The name also came to describe the product of such play: hasty, mechanical rhyming verse of little artistic merit, close in sense to doggerel. Recorded in English from at least the seventeenth century, the game was a popular parlor amusement in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, appearing in the writings of authors such as Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy. A mime-based variant called dumb crambo asked players to act out answers rather than speak them. Though rarely played under this name today, crambo survives as a charmingly specific term for spontaneous rhyming and for poetry valued more for its jingles than its substance.
nounA parlor game in which players improvise verses that rhyme with a word or line supplied by an opponent; by extension, any verse composed of rhyming doggerel of little merit.
- A rhyming game in which one player gives a word or line and another must produce a verse rhyming with it, often as a forfeit when failing.
- Rhyming verse or doggerel produced in this way; trivial or mechanical rhyming.
"After dinner the family played crambo, each person struggling to rhyme whatever word the youngest child threw at them."
"The evening's entertainment was a round of crambo, with the loser forced to rhyme 'spoon' on the spot."
"His poem was dismissed as mere crambo — clever rhymes strung together without real thought."
Rarely pluralized; the word normally functions as an uncountable mass noun referring either to the game or to doggerel verse generally.
"The diaries record many long winter evenings spent at crambos and other parlor games."
Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy both mention crambo — a party game where losing meant improvising rhymes on demand.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of crambo
The exact origin of crambo is uncertain, though the word has been current in English since at least the early seventeenth century. One frequently cited suggestion derives it from the Latin crambe, meaning cabbage, alluding to the proverbial dish served up again and again — fitting for a game of endlessly repeated rhymes — though this etymology is not firmly established. The word appears in early dictionaries such as Nathan Bailey's and Samuel Johnson's, where it is described as a game in which verses are made to given rhymes.
How crambo is actually used
A somewhat archaic or literary word today, familiar chiefly from 18th- and 19th-century writing. It carries a mildly dismissive connotation when applied to poetry, suggesting facile, unoriginal rhyming. The variant 'dumb crambo' was a related guessing game in which answers were conveyed in mime rather than verse.