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Perfect rhyme—also called full rhyme, exact rhyme, or true rhyme—is a form of
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 ...
between two words or phrases, satisfying the following conditions: *The stressed vowel sound in both words must be identical, as well as any subsequent sounds. For example, the words "trouble" and "bubble" (from Shakespeare's Macbeth) form a perfect rhyme. *The onset of the stressed syllable in the words must differ. For example, "bean" and "green" is a perfect rhyme, while "leave" and "believe" is not. Word pairs that satisfy the first condition but not the second (such as the aforementioned "leave" and "believe") are technically identities (also known as identical rhymes or identicals).
Homophones A homophone () is a word that is pronounced the same (to varying extent) as another word but differs in meaning. A ''homophone'' may also differ in spelling. The two words may be spelled the same, for example ''rose'' (flower) and ''rose'' (p ...
, being words of different meaning but identical pronunciation, are an example of identical rhyme.


Imperfect rhyme

Half rhyme or imperfect rhyme, sometimes called near-rhyme, lazy rhyme, or slant rhyme, is a type of
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 ...
formed by words with similar but not identical sounds. In most instances, either the vowel segments are different while the consonants are identical, or vice versa. This type of rhyme is also called approximate rhyme, inexact rhyme, imperfect rhyme (in contrast to perfect rhyme), off rhyme, analyzed rhyme, suspended rhyme, or sprung rhyme.


Use in popular music


Rock and punk

In the 1977 song " God Save the Queen" by the English punk rock band the
Sex Pistols The Sex Pistols were an English punk rock band formed in London in 1975. Although their initial career lasted just two and a half years, they were one of the most groundbreaking acts in the history of popular music. They were responsible for ...
, the authors create a rhyme with the lines "God save the queen" and "the fascist regime".


Hip hop and rap

Half rhyme is often used, along with
assonance Assonance is a resemblance in the sounds of words/syllables either between their vowels (e.g., ''meat, bean'') or between their consonants (e.g., ''keep, cape''). However, assonance between consonants is generally called ''consonance'' in America ...
, in rap music. This can be used to avoid rhyming
cliché A cliché ( or ) is an element of an artistic work, saying, or idea that has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, even to the point of being weird or irritating, especially when at some earlier time it was consi ...
s (e.g., rhyming "knowledge" with "college") or obvious rhymes, and gives the writer greater freedom and flexibility in forming lines of
verse Verse may refer to: Poetry * Verse, an occasional synonym for poetry * Verse, a metrical structure, a stanza * Blank verse, a type of poetry having regular meter but no rhyme * Free verse, a type of poetry written without the use of strict me ...
. Additionally, some words have no perfect rhyme in English, necessitating the use of slant rhyme. The use of half rhyme may also enable the construction of longer multisyllabic rhymes than otherwise possible. In the following lines from the song " N.Y. State of Mind" by rapper
Nas Nas (born 1973) is the stage name of American rapper Nasir Jones. Nas, NaS, or NAS may also refer to: Aviation * Nasair, a low-cost airline carrier and subsidiary based in Eritrea * National Air Services, an airline in Saudi Arabia ** Nas Air ...
, the author uses half rhyme in a complex cross rhyme pattern:
And be prosperous, though we live ''dangerous'' Cops could just arrest me, ''blamin' us'', we're held like hostages


Unconventional exceptions

Children's nursery rhyme
This Little Piggy "This Little Piggy" or "This Little Pig" is an English-language nursery rhyme and fingerplay. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19297. Lyrics One popular version is: Fingerplay The rhyme is usually counted out on an infant or ...
displays an unconventional case of slant rhyme. "Home" is rhymed with "none".
This little piggy stayed (at) home...this little piggy had none.
In
The Hives The Hives are a Swedish rock band that rose to prominence in the early 2000s during the garage rock revival. Their mainstream success came with the release of the album '' Veni Vidi Vicious'', containing the single " Hate to Say I Told You So" ...
's song " Dead Quote Olympics", singer
Howlin' Pelle Almqvist Per "Pelle" Almqvist (born 29 May 1978), also known as Howlin' Pelle Almqvist, is a Swedish singer and songwriter. He is the lead singer of garage rock band The Hives. Biography Almqvist was born to a doctor father and a teacher mother. Almq ...
rhymes "idea" with "library":Archived a
Ghostarchive
and th
Wayback Machine
This time you really got something, it's such a clever idea But it doesn't mean it's good because you found it at the libra-ri-a
The
Chuck Berry Charles Edward Anderson Berry (October 18, 1926 – March 18, 2017) was an American singer, songwriter and guitarist who pioneered rock and roll. Nicknamed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, Father of Rock and Roll", he refined a ...
song " Let It Rock" (1960) rhymes "Alabama" with "hammer":
In the heat of the day down in Mobile, Alabama Workin' on the railroad with a steel drivin' hamma


See also

* Holorime *
Internal rhyme In poetry, internal rhyme, or middle rhyme, is rhyme that occurs within a single line of verse, or between internal phrases across multiple lines. By contrast, rhyme between line endings is known as end rhyme. Internal rhyme schemes can be denoted ...
* Monorhyme *
Rime riche Rime riche () is a form of rhyme with three identical sounds (phoneme) including the stressed vowel. In classical French poetry (between Malherbe and Romanticism) rhymes normally have to be visual too: both sound and spelling have to be ident ...


Bibliography

* Smith, M., Joshi, A. (2020). Rhymes in the Flow: How Rappers Flip the Beat. United States: University of Michigan Press. * The Princeton Handbook of Poetic Terms: Third Edition. (2016). United States: Princeton University Press. * Lasser, M. (2019). City Songs and American Life, 1900-1950. United Kingdom: University of Rochester Press. *Barnes, W. (1854). A Philological Grammar: Grounded Upon English, and Formed from a Comparison of More Than Sixty Languages. Being an Introduction to the Science of Grammar and a Help to Grammars of All Languages, Especially English, Latin and Greek. United Kingdom: J. R. Smith. *Stoker, J. (2015). Slant Rhyme. United Kingdom: Xlibris US.


References

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 ...
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