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Feminine rhymes involve two or more syllables, with the last syllable unstressed, while masculine rhymes focus on the final stressed syllable. Feminine rhymes are common in silly poems and nursery rhymes, but can also be used in love poetry. Shakespeare was skilled at using feminine rhyme in his sonnets.
Men are supposed to be the strong and silent type, while women have a reputation for being more talkative. Perhaps this is why masculine rhyme involves single-syllable pairs, while feminine rhymes are those involving two, or even three, ringing syllables. In the nature of things, masculine rhymes have only one term by which they are called, while feminine rhymes have a veritable cornucopia, including double rhyme, triple rhyme, and extended rhyme, among others.
Strictly speaking, feminine rhymes are words of at least two syllables in which the last syllable is unstressed. This unstressed syllable and the preceding one are rhymed in a pair of words such as time and feather. Words with three or more syllables that rhyme with the last two syllables and have an unstressed last syllable can also be found in feminine rhyming word pairs.
In contrast, masculine rhyme focuses on the final stressed syllable. One-syllable rhyming pairs cannot be classified as feminine; pairs like quake and fake are masculine due to their structure. Word pairs such as formulate and confiscate are also masculine, despite being composed of three syllables each; this is because the rhyme is only on the final syllable, and it is a stressed syllable.
Fans of silly poems are, whether they know it or not, probably also very fond of girly nursery rhymes. This type of sound pairing is very common in limericks and children’s stories told in rhyme. There’s just something inherently fun about repeating double sounds, like those that occur in wobble and wobble or tortoise and belt.
It is possible that female rhymes are more often dumber than male rhymes because it is more difficult to find word pairs that share so much sound material. This may force the poet to espouse words that are strange bedfellows, for example, jury and fuzzy or baffle and accuse. Needless to say, this is pure delight for a limerist who has a ready-made excuse to write about a professor who is learning less and less.
The quirky and comical side of feminine rhyme can, in the right hands, give way to something sweeter. The feminine rhyme, handled well, is subtle and delicate, making it perfect for a love poem. William Shakespeare was particularly adept at this use of female rhyme in his Sonnet 20: “A woman’s face with the same hand as Nature painted / Hast thou, mistress of my passion; / A woman’s kind heart, but she does not know / With changing change, as is the fashion of fake women ”.
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