rhyme

Identity or close similarity of sound between accented syllables.

See also:

• Alliteration
• Assonance
• "The Chaos," by Charivarius
• Consonance
• Homoioteleuton
• Mnemonic
• Onomatopoeia
• Reduplicative

Examples and Observations:

• "Yes, the zebra is fine.
  But I think it's a shame,
  Such a marvelous beast
  With a cart that's so tame.
  The story would really be better to hear
  If the driver I saw were a charioteer.
  A gold and blue chariot's something to meet,
  Rumbling like thunder down Mulberry Street!"
  (Dr. Seuss, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street)



• "Whose woods these are I think I know,
  His house is in the village though.
  He will not see me stopping here,
  To watch his woods fill up with snow."
  (Robert Frost, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening")



• "I am not a lean mean spitting machine."
  (Bart Simpson, The Simpsons)



• "The popularitie of Rime creates as many Poets as a hot summer flies."
  (Thomas Campion, 1602)



• "Hey, why don't I just go eat some hay, make things out of clay, lay by the bay? I just may! What do ya say?"
  (Adam Sandler, Happy Gilmore, 1996)



• "The most common rap rhymes are end rhymes, those rhymes that fall on the last beat of the musical measure, signaling the end of the poetic line. Two lines in succession with end rhymes comprise a couplet, the most common rhyme scheme in old-school rap. . . .
  
  "Rhyme is the reason we can begin to hear a rhythm just by reading these lines from 50 Cent's 2007 hit 'I Get Money': 'Get a tan? I'm already black. Rich? I'm already that / Gangsta, get a gat, hit a head in a hat / Call that a riddle rap. . . .' The first line establishes a pattern of stressed syllables in successive phrases ('already black,' 'already that') that he carries over into the next two lines ('get a gat, hit a head, in a hat, riddle rap'). Three of these four phrases end in rhymes, one a perfect rhyme ('gat' and 'hat') and the third a slant rhyme ('rap'). The overall effect of the performance rewards our anticipation by balancing expectation and surprise in its sounds."
  (Adam Bradley, Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop. BasicCivitas, 2009)



• "Deliberate rhyme in prose is amusing if the subject matter is light-hearted. Accidental rhyme seems careless, the product of a writer with a tin ear. In serious or grave material, rhyming word play in general seems inappropriate and at least undignified, if not repellant.
  
  "Rewriting a passage that appears elsewhere in this book . . ., I tried, 'Technology may have freed us from conventional war, which in the past consumed the whole nation and annihilated an entire generation.' You'll see immediately what's wrong with that sentence: the unwitting rhyme of nation and generation. Deliberate rhyme for special effects can be pleasant; unwitting rhyme almost never is. Here the rhyme sets up an unintended poetic cadence--either nation or generation had to go. Nation was easier, and the rewrite finally read, 'Technology may have freed us from conventional war, which in the past consumed the whole country and annihilated an entire generation.'"
  (Paula LaRocque, The Book on Writing. Marion Street, 2003)