Mental rhymes are nursery rhymes where one rhyming word is not spoken, but only implied. They can be structured or free verse and often use popular traditional styles like the limerick. The missing word is sometimes obscene or taboo. Mental rhyming is similar to rhyming slang, which replaces a rhyming word with another as a code.
A mental rhyme is a type of nursery rhyme with one primary feature: that in this type of nursery rhyme, an intended rhyming word remains unspoken, only associated with the poem in the mind of the reader or listener. In other words, a poet or speaker will recite or write rhyme to elicit a particular desired word without actually saying it. These types of nursery rhymes are often popular as lowbrow communication intended to circumvent obscenity bans or to implicitly present some sort of bold narrative.
In terms of structure, mental rhymes can be fixed verse or free verse. This type of rhymed poetry can be performed in conventional poetic meters with fixed line lengths and rhymes, or in less regulated types of poetry. Many of these rhymes are performed in popular traditional styles such as the five-line limerick, which has a sort of tone and style that often complements the purposes of mental rhyming.
Mostly, the rhymes themselves in mental rhymes are quite concrete, although again, a primary feature of many of these types of rhymes is that the second rhyming word is not spoken, but instead deliberately replaced with another word which does not rhyme and which is obviously not relevant to the previous story. The net effect is that as the writer or speaker replaces the word, it veers into a subsequent narrative that contains its own structure.
In an abundance of cases of mental rhyming, the word that is left out of the rhyme is obscene or taboo in some way. This means that even the implied rhyme connection might be uncomfortable for some listeners or readers. It is important for a writer or speaker to know their audience so that they can use common sense about when to present this type of poem or nursery rhyme.
The phenomenon of mental rhyming is in many ways like another somewhat unrelated use of rhyme that is often called rhyming slang. In rhyming slang, which is very common in the UK and some other linguistic communities, a rhyming word is replaced with another rhyming word as a sort of informal code. The intent here is different from the intent of a mental rhyme; the general purpose of rhyming slang is simply to obscure communication. Where some rhyming slang may start out as effective code, where only insiders understand what is being said, when a specific piece of rhyming slang catches on, the alternative meaning becomes apparent to a wider audience.
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