An eye rhyme, also called a visual rhyme or a sight rhyme, is a
rhyme
A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually, the exact same phonemes) in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of perfect rhyming is consciously used for a musical or aesthetic ...
in which two words are spelled similarly but pronounced differently. Examples include the names "
Sean Bean
Sean Bean (born Shaun Mark Bean on 17 April 1959) is an English actor. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Bean made his professional debut in a theatre production of ''Romeo and Juliet'' in 1983. Retaining his Yorkshire ac ...
" (pronounced "Shawn Been"), and the "
Stone of Scone
The Stone of Scone (; gd, An Lia Fàil; sco, Stane o Scuin)—also known as the Stone of Destiny, and often referred to in England as The Coronation Stone—is an oblong block of red sandstone that has been used for centuries in the coronati ...
" (pronounced "stone of skoon").
Many older
English poems
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
, particularly those written in
Early Modern and
Middle English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English p ...
, contain rhymes that were originally true or full rhymes, but as read by modern readers, they are now eye rhymes because of
shifts in pronunciation, especially the
Great Vowel Shift
The Great Vowel Shift was a series of changes in the pronunciation of the English language that took place primarily between 1400 and 1700, beginning in southern England and today having influenced effectively all dialects of English. Through ...
. These are called historic rhymes. Historic rhymes are used by linguists to reconstruct pronunciations of old languages, and are used particularly extensively in the
reconstruction of Old Chinese Although Old Chinese is known from written records beginning around 1200 BC, the logographic script provides much more indirect and partial information about the pronunciation of the language than alphabetic systems used elsewhere.
Several authors h ...
, whose writing system does not allude directly to pronunciation.
Historic rhymes
One example of a historic rhyme (i.e., one that was a true rhyme but is now an eye rhyme) is the following:
When ''Hamlet'' was written around 1600, "flies" and "enemies" rhymed in local dialects, but as a result of the shifts in pronunciation since then, the original rhyme has been lost.
Another example of a historic rhyme is the following:
When the poem was published in 1712, the word "tea" (which is only attested in English from about 60 years before) was often pronounced "tay", as it still is in certain dialects; the pronunciation "tee" predominated from the mid-18th century.
Conventional historic rhymes
Historic rhymes that were lost phonetically in the Great Vowel Shift were sometimes retained as conventional rhymes. For example, in 1940,
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in ...
wrote:
This represents the same historic rhyme as "flies" and "enemies" above, even though by the 20th century "lie" and "poetry" had long since ceased to rhyme. (When Auden himself read the poem aloud, he pronounced "lie" and "poetry" in the usual, non-rhyming 20th-century fashion.
)
Similarly, although the noun "wind" shifted to its modern pronunciation during the 1700s, it remained a convention to rhyme it as though it were pronounced "wined", so that in 1896,
Ernest Dowson
Ernest Christopher Dowson (2 August 186723 February 1900) was an English poet, novelist, and short-story writer who is often associated with the Decadent movement.
Biography
Ernest Dowson was born in Lee, then in Kent, in 1867. His great-uncle ...
wrote:
See also
*
Eye dialect
*
Spelling pronunciation
A spelling pronunciation is the pronunciation of a word according to its spelling when this differs from a longstanding standard or traditional pronunciation. Words that are spelled with letters that were never pronounced or that were not pronounc ...
References
Word play
{{Poetry-stub