| gen. |
half rhyme (An imperfect rhyme in which the final (coda) consonants of stressed syllables (and, in modern English poetry, any following syllables to the end of the words) are identical in sound, but the vowels of the stressed syllables are not. Syn: near rhyme, pararhyme. WT. (in poetry) a rhyme between words with differing vowels, as bees and buzz. MD. a terminal consonance other than rhyme in two or more words (as in the unstressed final syllables of hollow and shallow or the matching terminal consonant clusters of stopped and wept). WTNI. also called near rhyme, slant rhyme, or oblique rhyme. In prosody, two words that have only their final consonant sounds and no preceding vowel or consonant sounds in common (such as stopped and wept, or parable and shell). The device was common in Welsh, Irish, and Icelandic verse years before it was first used in English by Henry Vaughan. It was not used regularly in English until Gerard Manley Hopkins and William Butler Yeats began to do so. Britannica Alexander Demidov) |
