Types of rhyme, with examples

Two words rhyme when they sound alike from their last stressed vowel to the end: "night" and "light", "mountain" and "fountain". How alike they sound, and where in the line they fall, decides the type.

Types of rhyme

Perfect rhyme

The same sounds from the last stressed vowel on, like "bay" and "day", or "night" and "light".

Slant rhyme

Also called half or near rhyme: sounds that are close but not the same, like "milk" and "walk", or "bridge" and "grudge".

Eye rhyme

Words spelled alike that sound different, like "love" and "move": a rhyme for the page, not the ear.

Masculine and feminine rhyme

A rhyme on one stressed syllable, like "away" and "day", is masculine; one on a stressed syllable followed by a soft one, like "dreaming" and "streaming", is feminine.

Internal rhyme

A rhyme inside the line rather than at its end, as in Poe's "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary".

An example

"The gull flew low across the bay"

"The ship set out at break of day"

"Bay" and "day" are a perfect rhyme, and both lines have eight syllables: a couplet.

Rhyme schemes

Letters show which lines rhyme with which: lines with the same letter rhyme, and x marks a line that rhymes with none.

• Couplets, aabb: each pair of lines rhymes.
• Alternate rhyme, abab: every other line rhymes.
• Enclosed rhyme, abba: the two outer lines rhyme, and so do the two inner ones.
• The ballad stanza, xaxa: only the second and fourth lines rhyme.
• The limerick, aabba: five lines, the short third and fourth paired.
• The Shakespearean sonnet, abab cdcd efef gg: three alternate quatrains and a closing couplet.

Rhyming in the game

Poetry Game gives the Rhyme Master badge to the poet with the most lines that rhyme with another line of the same poem. English spelling doesn't follow sound, so in an English game it compares each line's last word from its last vowel letters on, a silent e at the end set aside: "night" and "light" share "ight", "love" and "dove" share "ov". A short word ending in a vowel counts too, so "me" rhymes with "be" and "sky" with "fly".

So perfect rhymes spelled alike count, and so do eye rhymes like "love" and "move", and a shared ending such as "-ing". Rhymes spelled differently, such as "true" and "through" or "bear" and "chair", don't, and neither do slant rhymes.