nursery rhyme
12
1.3
- noun
- /ˈnɜr.sə.ri raɪm/
- Literature
:
rima infantil
- Children love to listen to the nursery rhyme 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' before bedtime.
- songs and nursery rhymes
- sing nursery rhymes
- includes many nursery rhymes
That's the kind of nursery rhyme I'm thinking of.
- That's the kind of nursery rhyme I'm thinking of.
Examples
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The origin of the nursery rhyme "There was a crooked man" is in British history.
Blog text (21) -
Blithely, their mother sang nursery rhymes as she marched ahead.
Fiction book (2000) -
Makes me think of nursery rhymes.
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The nursery rhyme... is part of our family history.
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I liked nursery rhymes for a while.
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Like the fine lady in the nursery rhyme, "She shall have music wherever she goes."
Academic text (1997) -
Some could not sing songs or repeat nursery rhymes.
Academic text (2015) -
The funniest one I heard was the nursery rhyme Ba Ba Rainbow Sheep.
Blog text (20) -
No one left to be "butchers and bakers and candlestick makers," as the old nursery rhyme put it.
Academic text (2014) -
A first-grade theatre lesson focused on nursery rhymes, highlighting how a teacher might scaffold language learning and comprehension.
Academic text (2013)
Synonyms
How Soothing
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a short poem or song for children' is directly derivable from combining 'nursery' (a place or context for young children) with 'rhyme' (a rhymed verse). This is a literal, compositional compound found cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would readily infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
The phrase nursery rhyme may come from a simple scene: adults singing short, rhyming songs to children in the nursery, the child's room, where rhyme meant a short poem with matching sounds. That's why nursery rhyme today means 'a short song or poem for children'.