- This article is about the poetic technique. For the form of ice, see rime ice.
A rhyme or rime is the association of words with similar sounds, a technique most often used in poetry. (The spelling rime is older than rhyme, but the latter is more common today.) Indeed, "a rhyme" is sometimes used to refer to a rhyming couplet or short verse; see nursery rhyme. The term has also been applied (as "sight rhyme") to words which are similar only in their written forms.
In the study of linguistics and phonology, rime is a term used to refer specifically to the nucleus and coda of a syllable.
Types of rhyme
The concept of rhyme and its role in poetry vary considerably in different cultures. In modern English, and most European literary traditions, it is the final vowel/consonant combination found at the ends of lines that are repeated across the rhyming words.
When words within a single line are rhymed, it is called an internal rhyme.
Categories of rhyme include:
- masculine: a rhyme in which the stress is on the final syllable of the words. (rhyme, sublime, crime)
- feminine: a rhyme in which the stress is on the penultimate syllable of the words. (wiki, tricky, sticky)
- dactylic: a rhyme in which the stress is on the third-to-last syllable (accident, president)
- triple: a rhyme in which all three syllables of a three-syllable word are stressed equally.
- perfect: a rhyme between words that are identical in sound. (sight, site)
- oblique (or slant): a rhyme with an imperfect match in sound.
- consonance: matching consonants. (her, dark)
- half rhyme is consonance on the final consonants of the words involved
- assonance: matching vowels. (shake, hate)
- sight (or eye): a similarity in spelling but not in sound. (cough, bough)
- imperfect: a rhyme between a stressed and an unstressed syllable. (den, siren)
- identity: a rhyme that starts at a consonant instead of a vowel, or rhyming a word with itself. (gun, begun)
- semirhyme: a rhyme with an extra syllable on one word. (bend, ending)
A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhyming lines in a poem.
Rhyme in English
See English poetry
Old English poetry is mostly alliterative verse. One of the earliest rhyming poems in English is The Rhyming Poem.
No English words rhyme (in the strict sense of masculine or feminine ryhme) with wasp.
Rhyme in French
In French, the typical two-phoneme rhyme common in English poetry is called rime suffisante.
The rime riche ("rich rhyme") of three phonemes is classically more admired. To an Anglophone ear, by contrast, this often sounds like a very weak rhyme. For example, an English perfect or identity rhyme, such as homophones shoot and chute, would seem weak, whereas a French rhyme of homophones doigt and doit qualifies as rime riche. Rime richissime ("very rich rhyme") is a rhyme of more than three phonemes.
Here is a holorime (an extreme example of rime richissime spanning an entire verse):
- Gall, amant de la Reine, alla (tour magnanime)
- Gallamant de l'Arène à la Tour Magne, à Nimes.
- Gallus, lover of the Queen, went (magnanimous gesture)
- Gallantly from the Arena to the Great Tower, at Nimes.
Rhyme in Hebrew
Ancient Hebrew verse did not generally rhyme. However, many Jewish liturgical poems rhyme today, because they were mostly written in medieval Europe, where rhymes were in vogue.
Rhyme in Greek
See Homoioteleuton
Rhyme in Latin
Rhyme was unknown in Latin poetry, until it was introduced under the influence of local vernacular traditions in the early Middle Ages. E.g. the Latin hymn Dies Irae:
- Dies irae, dies illa
- Solvet saeclum in favilla
- Teste David cum Sybilla
Medieval poetry may mix Latin and vernacular languages. Mixing languages in verse or rhyming words in different languages is termed macaronic.
Rhyme in Welsh
See cynghanedd
See also
External links
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