Rhyme

Normally end-rhyme, that is, lines of verse characterized by the consonance of terminal words or syllables. Rhymed words conventionally share all sounds following the word's last stressed syllable. Thus "tenacity" and "mendacity" rhyme, but not "jaundice" and "John does," or "tomboy" and "calm bay." The rhyme scheme is usually the pattern of end-rhymes in a stanza, each rhyme being encoded by a letter of the alphabet from a onwards.

• Apocopated: an imperfect rhyme between the final syllable of a word and the penultimate syllable of another word. For example,

  Cardinals, red and dun, Chatter when it's sunny.

   

• Amphisbaenic rhyme: a reversed rhyme, such as "trot" and "tort."

   

• Antisthecon or wrenched rhyme: a rhyme created by distorting a word, such as "Samoa" for "some more of" in the limerick "An old maid in the land of Aloha."

   

• Broken rhyme: rhyming with an initial or medial syllable of a word that is split between two lines with a hyphen.

   

• Eye rhyme: words rhyming only as spelled, not as pronounced, and hence not a perfect or true rhyme. An example is "through" and "slough."

   

• Feminine rhyme: gendered expression for rhymes ending in one or more unstressed syllables, such as "fruity" and "booty." The expressions light, weak or multi-syllable rhyme avoid the sexist bias.

   

• Half-rhyme: rhyming only with the consonants in the terminal syllable(s) of a multi-syllable word. An example is "concrete" and "litcrit". Also termed ‘off-rhyme,’ ‘slant rhyme,’ or apophany, in which two single-syllable words (such as ‘tell’ and ‘toll’) share the opening and closing consonants but not the intervening vowel. See Consonance.

   

• Identical rhymes: using the same word, identically in sound and in sense, twice in rhyming position.

   

• Initial rhyme: see Alliteration.

   

• Internal rhyme: rhymes between a word within a line, often from a medial position (termed also leonine) and one at the end of the line. Gelett Burgess' "An Alphabet of Famous Goops," rhyming aabbcc in 3-line stanzas, is an example. Othertimes words in the middle of two successive lines will rhyme in an interlaced way.

   

• Masculine rhyme: gendered expression for rhymes ending in a stressed syllable, such as "hells" and "bells." The expressions strong or one-syllable rhyme avoid the sexist bias.

   

• Monorhyme: the use of only one rhyme in a stanza. An example is William Blake's "Silent, Silent Night."

   

• Pararhyme: Edmund Blunden's term for double consonance, where different vowels appear within identical consonant pairs (a feature of Wilfrid Owens' verse).

   

• Tail rhyme: a stanza with a tail, tag, or extra short line that may rhyme with another such line later on. Chaucer's tale of Sir Thopas is one example.

   

• Rich rhyme: rhymes identical in sound (or spelling) but semantically different, e.g., "Felicity was present | To pick up her present."

   

• Synthetic rhyme: a forced rhyme in which the spelling and sound of a word are distorted.

   

• Vowel rhyme: see Assonance.

See also Alliteration, Assonance, Consonance, Onomatopoeia, and Rime couée.