Rhyme

Rhyme happens when two or more words share similar sounds, usually the same phonemes, starting from their final stressed syllable and including any syllables that follow. This perfect rhyming is often used deliberately at the ends of lines in poems or songs to create a musical or pleasing effect. In a broader sense, rhyme can also describe other kinds of sound similarities near the ends of words. The word "rhyme" is sometimes used as a shorthand for any short poem, like a nursery rhyme or a Balliol rhyme.

The word comes from Old French *rime* or *ryme*, which may trace back to Old Frankish *rīm*, a Germanic term meaning "series" or "sequence." This is related to Old English *rīm* ("enumeration," "series," or "numeral") and Old High German *rīm*, and ultimately to Old Irish *rím* and Ancient Greek *ἀριθμός* (arithmos, "number"). Alternatively, the Old French words might come from Latin *rhythmus*, from Ancient Greek *ῥυθμός* (rhythmos, "rhythm"). The spelling "rhyme" (instead of the original "rime") appeared at the start of the Modern English period, likely from a scholarly but incorrect link to Latin *rhythmus*. The older spelling "rime" still exists as a rare alternative, as seen in *The Rime of the Ancient Mariner*. In linguistics and phonology, the spelling "rime" is sometimes used to refer to the nucleus and coda of a syllable, to distinguish it from poetic rhyme.

People enjoy rhyme partly for its pleasant, repeating pattern. It is an artistic tool for communicating with a reader or audience and serves as a powerful mnemonic device, helping with short-term memory. Regular use of end rhyme also marks the ends of lines, clarifying the poem's metrical structure for the listener. Poets use rhyme for their own purposes; for instance, William Shakespeare often used a rhyming couplet to signal the end of a scene in a play.

The word "rhyme" can be used in a specific or a general sense. Specifically, two words rhyme if their final stressed vowel and all following sounds are identical; two lines of poetry rhyme if their final strong positions contain such rhyming words. Examples include *sight* and *flight*, *deign* and *gain*, *madness* and *sadness*, and *love* and *dove*.

Perfect rhymes are classified by the location of the final stressed syllable. A single, or masculine, rhyme stresses the final syllable (*rhyme*, *sublime*). A double, or feminine, rhyme stresses the penultimate (second-to-last) syllable (*picky*, *tricky*). A dactylic rhyme stresses the antepenultimate (third-to-last) syllable (*amorous*, *glamorous*). Feminine and dactylic rhymes can also appear as compound or mosaic rhymes (*poet*, *know it*).

In a general sense, rhyme refers to various kinds of phonetic similarity between words and their use in organizing verse. These general rhymes are classified by the degree and manner of similarity. Syllabic rhyme has the last syllable of each word sounding the same, but not necessarily with stressed vowels (*cleaver*, *silver*; *pitter*, *patter*; the final syllable of *bottle* and *fiddle* is a liquid consonant). Imperfect, or near, rhyme pairs a stressed and an unstressed syllable (*wing*, *caring*). Weak, or unaccented, rhyme pairs two sets of one or more unstressed syllables (*hammer*, *carpenter*). Semirhyme has an extra syllable on one word (*bend*, *ending*). Forced, or oblique, rhyme has an imperfect match in sound (*green*, *fiend*; *one*, *thumb*). Assonance matches vowels (*shake*, *hate*) and is sometimes called slant rhyme, along with consonance. Consonance matches consonants (*rabies*, *robbers*). Half rhyme, or slant rhyme, matches final consonants (*hand*, *lend*). Pararhyme matches all consonants (*tick*, *tock*). Alliteration, or head rhyme, matches initial consonants (*ship*, *short*).

Identical rhymes are considered less than perfect in English poetry but are valued more in other literatures, such as *rime riche* in French. While homophones and homonyms share the same stressed vowel sound, they fail the second condition for perfect rhyme: the preceding consonant must be different. If the sound before the stressed vowel is also identical, the rhyme is often seen as inferior. This super-rhyme, or "more than perfect rhyme," includes the identical rhyme, where both vowels and the onsets of the rhyming syllables match, as in *gun* and *begun*. Punning rhymes like *bare* and *bear* are also identical rhymes. The rhyme can extend even further back than the last stressed vowel; if it goes to the beginning of the line, creating two very similar or identical lines, it is called a holorhyme ("For I scream/For ice cream"). In poetics, these are considered identity, not rhyme.

Eye rhymes, also called sight rhymes or spelling rhymes, involve similarity in spelling but not in sound, where the final sounds are spelled the same but pronounced differently. Examples in English are *cough*, *bough*, and *love*, *move*. Some early written poetry seems to contain these, but in many cases the words actually rhymed when they were written, and later pronunciation changes have caused the mismatch.