Other Ways To Rhyme
This article is for: Beginner and Intermediate poets
People can get very het up about rhyme in poetry.
For some folks, if it doesn’t rhyme, it’s not poetry!
For others, rhyme is an old-fashioned technique that doesn’t fit well with our modern world, where things just aren’t as neat and tidy as they were in the old days.
But there’s another way of thinking about rhyme that goes far beyond the rhyme-or-don’t-rhyme debate.
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You see, there are actually lots of different kinds of rhyme.
And while you don’t need to use any of these to make a strong poem, knowing what they are gives you access to a very wide range of possible sound effects in your poetry. That’s why I think these kinds of rhyme are still totally relevant and highly useful.
In this article, I’ll show you what those other rhymes are, so you can find and use them.
(And then this article helps with how to use them.)
5 Ways To Different Rhymes
There are all kinds of different names for these other rhymes, including slant rhyme, half rhyme, pararhyme, vowel rhyme, and assonantal rhyme. But the names are not important—what matters is just how to find them! So I’ll call them all slant rhyme.
Let’s dive in.
Let’s suppose you want to find rhymes for the word “summer.”
First of all, you can list some full rhymes, such as
strummer
bummer
hummer
Full rhymes are pretty easy to find, especially in a good rhyming dictionary, so let’s move on to cool part: the slant rhymes!
1. Change just the stressed vowel sound
Full rhyme is based on matching:
the last stressed vowel sound in a word (in “summer” that’s the “u”)
all the sounds that come after the last stressed vowel.
So “summer” and “hummer” both have exactly the same last part, “ummer.”
So what happens if we change that last stressed syllable, but keep what comes after it?
“Summer” can become
simmer
samer
soma
or even
seem a.
the “-mer” part is the same in all of these slant rhymes, but the vowel ahead of it is different.
That means that “summer” and “simmer” are not full rhymes, but they echo each other enough to be called a slant rhyme.
2. Also change the consonant(s) before the last stressed vowel
In the examples above, I kept the “s” sound that came before the stressed vowel “u” in “summer.”
But if I change that “s” to other consonants, as well as changing the “u” vowel, I can make a whole new range of slant rhymes. Here are some:
slimmer
trimmer
beamer
dreamer
stoma
aroma
(Notice that many of these words are full rhymes with the slant rhymes word from method #1—which is one way you can find them.)
The rhymes “summer/aroma” or “dreamer/summer” are a bit more distant than the rhyme “summer/soma”, because we’ve kept only the “mer” part of summer, but nonetheless, there is still an echo there.
3. Change the consonant sound after the last stressed vowel
So far, we’ve kept the “mer” part constant, and changed the vowel before. But now, let’s change the consonant that comes after the last stressed vowel, and keep the vowel.
In other words, we’re keeping the “u” part of “summer”, but changing the “mm”.
A way to make rhymes that are very close to full is to choose a consonant that’s very close to the original one. In this case, that’s “nn." So we get:
stunner
runner
funner (Yes, I know this is not technically a word, but try telling my kids that…)
We could also change the consonant to something more different, like “tt,” and get:
utter
flutter
butter
“summer” and “butter” are further apart than “summer/runner,” but there’s still an echo, so they work!
Some others using this method are:
cover
other
color
sucker
These words all keep the “u” vowel but change the consonant after it.
4. Mess with the length of the word
One great way to create a slant rhyme is to use a rhyme word that has a different syllable count and stress pattern than the one you’re rhyming it with.
For example, “summer” has two syllables, and the stress is on “sum” (not on “mer”).
Therefore, we can use the unstressed final syllable, “mer,” to find a whole bunch of slant rhyme words.
Any full rhymes for “mer” will make slant rhymes for “summer”:
her
were
blur.
Although “mer” and “her” are full rhymes, “summer/her” is a slant rhyme because in “summer” there is no stress on “mer.” That makes the two words sound a little too different for full rhyme.
We could also choose a three-syllable word, for example:
sunnier
and all its rhymes, like
funnier
runnier.
5. Find slant rhymes for your slant rhymes!
This last step vastly expands your possibilities.
Because slant rhymes are about similar sounds rather than identical sounds, if you find a slant rhyme for your slant rhyme, there’s a good chance it will also be a slant rhyme for the original word!
For example, “cover” was one of our examples earlier. A slant rhyme for “cover” is “over” (using method #1, changing the vowel sound), and “over” is also a slant rhyme for “summer.”
Some others that work this way are:
belter
blather
bather
sticker
…and many more.
Now, at some point doing this, you’re going to end up with words that sound too far apart from the original word to you, to sound like rhymes.
Does “sticker” really connect enough with “summer”? You may think, NO—and that’s fine! Only take this as far as sounds right to you.
Last examples: some slant rhymes for “her,” made using techniques #1, #2, and #3:
hair
here
mere
mare
from her
smear
I think these are all also slant rhymes for “summer.”
A way to make this easier and more visual!
There’s a great tool for doing this process called a Rhymewell. (This was invented by poet W.N. Herbert.)
You put the word you want to rhyme in the middle of the page, then draw concentric rings around it. Like this:
In the closer rings, you put words that are closest in sound to your rhyme word. Then as you go out, you put words (and phrases) that are more and more distant in sound.
Like this:
Examples for a one-syllable rhyme word
Let’s find some rhymes for the word fish.
1. Change just the stressed vowel (the “i”)
Ummm… fesh? fush? fash?
—No luck this time! Sometimes that happens.
2. Also change the consonant(s) before the last stressed vowel (the “f” as well as the “i”)
fresh
flush
sash
wish
rush
… and plenty more too.
3. Change the consonant sound after the last stressed vowel (the “sh”)
fit
fire
fizzle
4. Mess with the length of the word
Stand-offish
5. Find slant rhymes for your slant rhymes!
waspish
ruse
wisp
Next Steps:
Pick a book at random.
Open it at random.
Close your eyes, and put your finger on the page.
Whatever word your finger is on, that’s your rhyme word!
Put in in the middle of a Rhymewell, and use techniques #1 through #5 to find slant rhymes for it.
Now create a poem that uses some of these rhyme words—though not necessarily all at the end of lines!
