Rhymes can be perfect or imperfect, masculine or feminine, and even oblique. Perfect rhymes echo each phonetic piece after the initial sound of the final syllable, while masculine rhymes allow multisyllabic words with the rhyme on the final stressed syllable. Feminine rhymes require stress not on the final syllable and almost-rhyming sounds after the initial stressed syllable. Imperfect rhymes marry sounds from the stressed and unstressed syllables, while demi-rhymes connect the end of one word with the preceding syllable of the other. Oblique rhymes trick the ear with strong vocal identification.
Most people think they know what a rhyme is. They’ll point to two words with identical sounds at the end, like right and night, or even offer a pair like sing and bold, though they’re likely to be a little less sure. In fact, there are a number of types of rhymes. Rhymes, like poets themselves, can be perfect or imperfect, masculine or feminine, or even halfway or even oblique.
Perfect rhyme is one of the most popular types of rhyme. It is what most children and adults recognize. These little beauties march hand in hand, with each phonetic piece after the initial sound of the final syllable a perfect echo. Perfect one-syllable rhymes are most often found in simple poetry because it is easier to find precise sound matches for a word such as rhyme in tempo, mime, and crime.
These one-syllable perfect rhymes are a form of masculine rhymes. Another type of rhyme that is masculine allows for multisyllabic words but only if the rhyme is on the final syllable, as in the pair agitate and compensate. This final syllable must also be the stressed or stressed syllable to be considered masculine rhyme.
More complex, more intriguing and more beautiful to the ear are, of course, female rhymes. The trick to these types of rhymes is that the stress cannot be on the final syllable. Another requirement is that everything following the initial sound of the stressed syllable must almost rhyme. Passion and fashion are therefore female rhymes, but passion and mansion are not.
Imperfect rhymes marry sounds found in the stressed syllable of one word with those found in the unstressed syllable of another word, such as cling and rocking. Imperfect rhymes are used to great effect by intelligent poets who know they may escape the reader’s conscious recognition, but still impact their unconscious appreciation of the poem. Sadly, they are also used by inferior poets who either don’t have a strong understanding of the difference between perfect and imperfect types of rhyme or frankly don’t care.
Flipping an imperfect rhyme turns it into another type of rhyme, called a demi-rhyme. Here, the rhyming connection is at the end of one word and the preceding syllable of the other. An example of a semi-rhyme is found in the rhyming pair darning and manda.
Oblique rhymes trick the reader’s ear with strong vocal identification. Also called forced or oblique rhymes, they come in rhyming pairs such as won and dumb. Their half-rhyme cousins care little for vowels but find their rhyming justification only in the final consonant or consonant cluster of a word pair. Thus, camp and limp are perfectly acceptable half-rhymes.
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