Meanings
- countablerareuncountableA genre of pseudohaiku which combines a very short poetic structure with elegant mathematical expression; also, an example of this genre.
1988, Bob Grumman, Mathemaku II, main title
3 more examples
Each mathemaku’s math was central to it, not just an ad hoc ingredient in a some section of it. [¶] I was quite pleased with what I’d accomplished, but for some reason was only able to add a single unfinished mathemaku to my mathe-poetic oeuvre over the next twenty years or so.
1996, Joyce Nakamura, Contemporary Authors: Autobiographical Series, XXV, page 175Mathemaku for Beethoven
1999, The New Orleans Review, XXV, page 47, section titlePoet/critic Bob Grumman…[is] best known as a poet for his hybrid of haiku and mathematics, the “mathemaku.”
2005, Betsy Franco, Conversations with a Poet, page 210
Origin
Coined by Bob Grumman, who invented the genre, and first attested in 1988; formed as a blend of either mathema(tics) or mathema(tical) with (hai)ku.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
mathemaku. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/mathemaku
“mathemaku.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/mathemaku. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “mathemaku,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/mathemaku.
Source: mathemaku on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.