What do you call "rhymes" which are spelt but not sounded the same way?

Question

Here is an example from T. S. Eliot:

And even the Abstract Entities
Circumambulate her charm;
But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics warm.

I expect most people would say charm and warm do not rhyme, but their placement here suggests they are intended to be considered a rhyme on the basis of spelling.

What is this "rhyming" type called? I see it a lot. In some cases I wonder if it represents a shift in pronunciation. In others, such as this, I suspect not.

They rhyme enough to satisfy most poets. A rhyme does not need to be exact. In fact, poetry does not require rhymes at all. — Hot Licks, Mar 12 '15 at 00:04
In addition, words are often mispronounced in poetry to accommodate rhymes of this type. — Ian MacDonald, Mar 12 '15 at 00:18
That's exactly what ther are @DanBron . Do you want to make it an answer? There's not a lot more to be said on the subject! :-) — Dan, Mar 12 '15 at 00:57
If you examine the full poem you will see that there are stanzas that rhyme worse than the one above. "Eyes" and "luxuries", eg. It's just the way Eliot wrote. (And yet, even in spite of this grievous imperfection, he's still remembered as a pretty good poet.) — Hot Licks, Mar 12 '15 at 01:04
"eye rhymes" or "no rhyme because it is not required by poetry". How do you know that your point similar to Eliot's? The real explanation can be based only by his other texts and arguments. For instance, I do not think Eliot used "eye rhyme" here. I think the poetry is more for reading loudly than just reading without pronouncing. — Darius Miliauskas, Mar 12 '15 at 04:54
@ermanen - How is pronunciation in the 1600s more relevant to pronunciation ca 1920 than is current pronunciation? — Hot Licks, Mar 12 '15 at 12:41

score 9 · Answer 1 · edited Nov 29 '16 at 22:04

9

They are called eye rhymes. Here is a reference from Brittanica:

Eye rhyme, in poetry, an imperfect rhyme in which two words are spelled similarly but pronounced differently (such as move and love, bough and though, come and home, and laughter and daughter). Some of these (such as flood and brood) are referred to as historical rhymes because at one time they probably had the same pronunciation.

edited Nov 29 '16 at 22:04

choster

43,403

answered Mar 12 '15 at 09:24

Brian Hitchcock

13,674

2

How do you know it is the case of eye-rhyme? – Darius Miliauskas Mar 12 '15 at 10:16
If the ending is "spelt the same way", as OP stated, it is an eye rhyme. From the fact that it LOOKS as if it ought to be pronounced the same. "The tough coughs as he ploughs [through] the dough." (Theodore Geisel) – Brian Hitchcock Mar 13 '15 at 00:43
... of course, that's not a poem, just an example of five different pronunciations of "ough" (six if you count "ought"). – Brian Hitchcock Mar 13 '15 at 00:47

Darius Miliauskas · Answer 2 · 2015-03-12T04:50:10.933

Basically, it depends on your approach, and which critical trends you have chosen (genetic criticism, historical criticism, formalism, psychoanalytic criticism etc.).

The most popular definition of the rhyme is "correspondence of sound between words or the endings of words, especially when these are used at the ends of lines of poetry." So, your example does not fit the definition, and it looks as it is not the rhyme from your or our point of view.

Rhyme is the repetition of similar sounds in two or more words. In poetry these words are usually at the end of a line and help create a certain rhythm. There is the perfect opportunities of looking for the rhyme online (for instance, http://www.rhymezone.com) So, the main aspect of the rhyme is related to phonetics.

However, here is the poetry written by the poet who has his own language background. Eliot was born in 1888, more than hundred years ago, and even changed his citizenship. If you would read Shakespeare's poetry, you will notice that the meaning of the words changed during several hundred years, probably it happened to the pronunciation as well (there are no records how Shakespeare pronounced different words). I think it is the rhyme because Eliot could pronounce words in different way then you or me pronounce them today. It could be his dialect or even idiolect ("The speech habits peculiar to a particular person").

Moreover, the essence of the poetry is to sound, not to stay in the written form. Thus, it is the rhyme, and these words ("charm" and "warm") should be read as they sound the similar way. Of course there are opinions claiming that the rhyme is not necessary part of the modern poetry, perhaps they are right, but the text of literature should be interpreted in the sense of author's way (historical approach), and, when Eliot wrote this piece of poetry, the rhyme was more important than today.

Unlike Shakespeare's time (where I believe people are still arguing about things like whether memory was an exact rhyme with fortify), we have dictionaries with pronunciation from the 19th century. And both English and American dictionaries from those times show that warm was pronounced with the vowel of corn, and not of charm. — Peter Shor, Mar 12 '15 at 01:07
T.S.Eliot died in 1965, fer cryin' out loud! It's not like he was a contemporary of Shakespeare. — Hot Licks, Mar 12 '15 at 01:07
Have you seen Eliot's dictionary of pronunciation or just the dictionary of pronunciation of that century? I heard some poets who pronounce the words in different way then presented in the officially published pronunciation dictionaries. — Darius Miliauskas, Mar 12 '15 at 04:42
@Darius: In that very poem, Eliot rhymes eyes and luxuries, skeleton and bone, and charm and warm. Do you think he really pronounced *that many* words differently than everyone else? Of course, he was able to write poems with nearly all perfect rhymes when he wanted to ... read his practical cats poems. — Peter Shor, Mar 12 '15 at 21:03
@Darius: Tape recorders were invented before Eliot died. You can hear Eliot read the poem on Vimeo. He does not rhyme eyes and luxuries, skeleton and bone, or charm and warm (although the last two come pretty close to rhyming in his dialect). — Peter Shor, Apr 17 '21 at 00:05

What do you call "rhymes" which are spelt but not sounded the same way?

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