Rhyme is a literary device that involves the repetition of similar sounds in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Rhyming is particularly common in many types of poetry, especially at the ends of lines, and is a requirement in formal verse. The most familiar and widely-used form of rhyming is perfect rhyme, in which the stressed syllables of the words, along with all subsequent syllables, share identical sounds. However, there are actually a variety of other types of rhymes, such as imperfect rhyme or slant rhyme, which also involve the repetition of similar sounds but in ways that are not quite as precise as perfect rhyme. Some additional key details about rhyme include:
- Rhyme is often used for a musical or aesthetic effect in the final position of lines within poems or songs.
- The word "rhyme" has come to be sometimes used as a shorthand term for any brief poem, such as a nursery rhyme or Balliol rhyme.
- Rhyme can be a road sign to sense, ambiguity, and new possible meanings.
- Rhyme is used by poets and occasionally by prose writers to produce sounds appealing to the reader’s senses and to unify and establish a poem’s stanzaic form.
- End rhyme (i.e., rhyme used at the end of a line to echo the end of another line) is most common, but internal, interior, or leonine rhyme is frequently used as an occasional embellishment in a poem.
- Rhyming words are two or more words that have the same or similar ending sound.
In summary, rhyme is a literary device that involves the repetition of similar sounds in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words, and it is commonly used in poetry and songs for a musical or aesthetic effect.
