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Chapter Three - Rhyme

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 October 2019

Michael Ferber
Affiliation:
University of New Hampshire
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Summary

The most common meaning of “rhyme” is the sameness or identity of sound between two words at the end of lines of verse, an identity that includes a stressed vowel and whatever follows it, if anything: a consonant or two, another syllable or two (if unstressed), even another (unstressed) word. So, in a million poems and songs, “moon” and “June” are united by rhyme, or “love” and “dove.” Bisyllabic rhymes are stressed on the second-last syllable, as in “marriage” and “carriage,” or “spoken” and “awoken.” Trisyllabic rhymes are stressed on the third-last syllable, such as “history” and “mystery”; they are often deployed for comic purposes, such as when Byron rhymes “gunnery” with “nunnery,” or “goddesses” with “bodices” (Don Juan 1.38, 41). Tetrasyllabic rhymes show up in Ogden Nash’s poems, for example, when he pairs “antidisestablishmentarianism” with “antiquarianism” (“No, You Be a Lone Eagle”).

Type
Chapter
Information
Poetry and Language
The Linguistics of Verse
, pp. 58 - 85
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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  • Rhyme
  • Michael Ferber, University of New Hampshire
  • Book: Poetry and Language
  • Online publication: 02 October 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108554152.003
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  • Rhyme
  • Michael Ferber, University of New Hampshire
  • Book: Poetry and Language
  • Online publication: 02 October 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108554152.003
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Rhyme
  • Michael Ferber, University of New Hampshire
  • Book: Poetry and Language
  • Online publication: 02 October 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108554152.003
Available formats
×