The repetition of syllables, typically at the end of a verse line. 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.” A rhyme scheme is usually the pattern of end rhymes in a stanza, with each rhyme encoded by a letter of the alphabet, from a onward (ABBA BCCB, for example). Rhymes are classified by the degree of similarity between sounds within words, and by their placement within the lines or stanzas.
-Eye rhyme rhymes only when spelled, not when pronounced. For example, “through” and “rough.”
-End rhyme, the most common type, is the rhyming of the final syllables of a line.
-Feminine rhyme applies to the rhyming of one or more unstressed syllables, such as “dicing” and “enticing.” Ambrose Bierce’s “The Day of Wrath” employs feminine rhyme almost exclusively. -Half rhyme is the rhyming of the ending consonant sounds in a word (such as “tell” with “toll,” or “sopped” with “leapt”). This is also termed “off-rhyme,” “slant rhyme,” or apophany.
-Identical rhyme employs the same word, identically in sound and in sense, twice in rhyming positions.
-Internal rhyme is rhyme within a single line of verse, when a word from the middle of a line is rhymed with a word at the end of the line.
-Masculine rhyme describes those rhymes ending in a stressed syllable, such as “hells” and “bells.” It is the most common type of rhyme in English poetry.
-Monorhyme is the use of only one rhyme in a stanza.
-Pararhyme is poet Edmund Blunden’s term for double consonance, where different vowels appear within identical consonant pairs. For example, see Wilfred Owen’s “Strange Meeting”: “Through granites which Titanic wars had groined. / Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned.”
See also alliteration, assonance, consonance, and onomatopoeia.
-Eye rhyme rhymes only when spelled, not when pronounced. For example, “through” and “rough.”
-End rhyme, the most common type, is the rhyming of the final syllables of a line.
-Feminine rhyme applies to the rhyming of one or more unstressed syllables, such as “dicing” and “enticing.” Ambrose Bierce’s “The Day of Wrath” employs feminine rhyme almost exclusively. -Half rhyme is the rhyming of the ending consonant sounds in a word (such as “tell” with “toll,” or “sopped” with “leapt”). This is also termed “off-rhyme,” “slant rhyme,” or apophany.
-Identical rhyme employs the same word, identically in sound and in sense, twice in rhyming positions.
-Internal rhyme is rhyme within a single line of verse, when a word from the middle of a line is rhymed with a word at the end of the line.
-Masculine rhyme describes those rhymes ending in a stressed syllable, such as “hells” and “bells.” It is the most common type of rhyme in English poetry.
-Monorhyme is the use of only one rhyme in a stanza.
-Pararhyme is poet Edmund Blunden’s term for double consonance, where different vowels appear within identical consonant pairs. For example, see Wilfred Owen’s “Strange Meeting”: “Through granites which Titanic wars had groined. / Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned.”
See also alliteration, assonance, consonance, and onomatopoeia.