Is there a word that means "almost rhymes"?

Question

Sometimes you'll see in poetry or song lyrics, that words don't exactly rhyme, but they almost rhyme. I thought I remembered a high school English teacher once telling our long ago English class that there was a word that means "almost rhymes".

Am I imagining things? If not, does anyone know the word?

There's a lovely paper on imperfect rhymes in rock music by Arnold Zwicky, "Well, this rock and roll has got to stop. Junior's head is hard as a rock" from CLS 12 (1976). — John Lawler, Dec 17 '14 at 16:41
Another example I just recently heard in three consecutive verses in a song: excited, private, divided — verbatim, Dec 29 '14 at 23:22

score 7 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 17 '14 at 07:40

7

It is called half-rhyme.

...is a type of rhyme formed by words with similar but not identical sounds. In most instances, either the vowel segments are different while the consonants are identical, or vice versa. [Wikipedia]

It also has a bunch of other names:

near-rhyme
lazy rhyme
approximate rhyme
inexact rhyme
imperfect rhyme (in contrast to perfect rhyme)
off rhyme
analyzed rhyme
suspended rhyme.

answered Dec 17 '14 at 07:40

ermanen

62,797

I usually hear it as approximate rhyme. – IchabodE Dec 18 '14 at 00:00

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 07:40

1

I think assonance is close to what you are looking for: (from TFD)

similarity of sounds in words or syllables.

resemblance of sound, especially of the vowel sounds in words, as in: "that dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea" (William Butler Yeats).

edited Jun 15 '20 at 07:40

Community

1

answered Dec 17 '14 at 07:01

user127219 · Answer 3 · 2014-12-17T18:17:41.803

The words which are not exactly rhymes are called imperfect rhymes in which we stress
between a rhyme and an unstressed syllable.e.g,swing,ring, wing, caring etc. Other rhymes which are not perfect rhymes

1) weak rhyme

2) semi-rhyme

3) forced rhyme

4) slant rhyme

In perfect rhymes we have to make some efforts to identify their pronunciation if
somebody speaks it frequently (picky, tricky) but in imperfect rhymes we have to make
very less efforts(wing, caring)

Is there a word that means "almost rhymes"?

3 Answers3

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