Perfect rhymes are rare because they require identical stressed vowels and different sounds before them. Imperfect rhymes allow more leeway in syllable length and final sounds. Poets must use perfect rhyme judiciously to avoid sounding artificial. Homophones may or may not be considered perfect rhymes.
Like all things perfect, perfect rhyme is less common than other, less perfect versions. This is due to the nature of its composition. For two words to rhyme perfectly, they must be absolutely identical from the point where the stressed vowel of each word occurs to the end of the word. Also, the sound that occurs immediately before that vowel must be different. Most of the time it will be a consonant, but not always.
This means that words like still and quill are perfect rhymes because they are both one-syllable words, the first stressed vowel is i, and the sounds that follow are identical. Contorto and rapport are also perfect rhymes, but leave and believe are not because the sound immediately preceding the long E is identical and also because they have a different number of syllables. Perfect rhymes, which are also called exact, full, or true rhymes, are less common in multisyllabic words with the stress on one of the preceding syllables.
Perfect rhymes attract the child in every reader. Perhaps because they are the daily bread – rhymes perfectly with the saying and the hum – of nursery rhymes, or perhaps the love of linguistic balance is somehow programmed into our DNA. Poets, however, must use perfect rhyme judiciously. Poems created entirely on perfect rhymes end up sounding artificially singsong. Most poets who work in rhyme are aware of this danger and play perfectly with rhymes that may be flawed or skewed.
Imperfect rhymes leave a little leeway in terms of syllable length, plurals, or other additional final sounds. For example, a slanted rhyme might pair desperation with, well, couple; these two words lack perfection in two ways. First, the articulation immediately preceding “aria” is the same; with perfect rhyme, they should be different, like paired and beautiful. Second, this particular rhyme allows a two-syllable word to dance with a monosyllabic one, which is verboten in the world of perfect rhyme.
Imperfect or oblique rhymes are also called mid, close, out, or spring rhymes. In some cases, it is only the consonants that are identical, such as the word pair stare and memorize. There is much discussion in poetry circles as to whether homophones, or words that sound identical but have different meanings, are actually perfect rhymes. Flower and flour is an example of a pair of words with clearly different meanings that a poet might legitimately rhyme in a poem; however, most experts agree that these are not technically perfect rhymes as the articulation preceding the stressed vowels is identical.
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