Have you ever wondered what to do with those words that you can’t find a word to naturally rhyme with? They are most likely refractory rhymes. In my latest contest, I am calling upon poets to write a poem in any genre and using any poetic form, on the topic of MOTHER SAID using only single or double syllable English language refractory rhymes at the end of every line (the lists of words are provided). See the contest page for the full details. You are, as always, invited to pose questions relating to this contest under the comment section, and preferably not via soup mail.
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© Mother Said, by Suzette Richards – image generated 11 June 2024.
Perfect Rhyme
In order to understand refractory rhymes, we first need to look at what constitutes PERFECT RHYME.
Perfect rhyme (also called strong rhyme, full rhyme, true rhyme, or exact rhyme) is rhyme in which the final accented vowel, and all succeeding consonants or syllables are identical in sound, while the preceding consonants are different, for example, evaNesce/transGRess. This single perfect rhyme (stress on the final syllable) defined:
- Final accented vowel (stressed vowel: ‘e’)
- Succeeding consonants to the above are identical in sound (‘sce’ & ’ss’)
- Preceding consonants to the accented vowel are different (‘n’ & ‘gr’)
- Anything before the stressed syllables (‘nesce’ & ‘gress) are not taken into account (‘eva’ & ‘trans’)
Perfect rhyme can be classified according to the number of syllables included in the rhyme, which is dictated by the location of the final stressed syllable. An example of perfect rhyme: identical position (4th from last) immeasurable/pleasurable (stressed syllables in boldface).
Refractory Rhymes
Refractory rhymes are those words that do not have a natural rhyming word without having to resort to foreign words (bouquet/cliché); absolute or obscure words (eg bucket/tucket); slang (eg bombed/glommed); slant rhyme (eg telephone/atone); or mosaic rhyme (eg poet/know it)—stressed syllables are in boldface. I used refractory rhymes, hyperbole and socialism, etc, in my poem, Mother Said:
Mother said --- (poetrysoup.com)
hyperbole (hy-per-bo-le: 4 syllables) has no natural/perfect rhyme. It is because the stress falls on the antepenultimate syllable. You would need to come up with a word that has a stressed syllable ‘er’, where the ‘p’ is replaced with a different consonant. ALSO, that word would have to match the succeeding syllable sounds ‘bo-le’ (‘-le’ is a liquid consonant). Hence it is classified as a refractory rhyme.
Quote
‘Multiple-word rhymes (a phrase that rhymes with a word, known as a phrasal or mosaic rhyme), self-rhymes (adding a prefix to a word and counting it as a rhyme of itself), imperfect rhymes (such as purple with circle), and identical rhymes (words that are identical in their stressed syllables, such as bay and obey) are often not counted as true rhymes and have not been considered. Only the list of one-syllable words can hope to be anything near complete; for polysyllabic words, rhymes are the exception rather than the rule. …
‘For feminine rhymes [double rhyme], the final two syllables must match to count as a rhyme. Once the stress shifts to the penultimate syllable, rhymeless words are quite common, perhaps even the norm: there may be more rhymeless words than words with rhymes’*
Happy quills!
Suzette
*List of English words without rhymes - Wikipedi