Writing Help 129 | - ☆ Freelance Writer
Apr 06, 2013 | #1
Poetic Terms You Have to Learn
Most people don't remember having to learn what rhyme is, since, for native English speakers at least, our faculty for rhyme seems very natural. If I hear a song on the radio, for instance, I will immediately notice whether it rhymes or not, and more often than not, I will notice a song that doesn't rhyme first, because that is the exception rather then the common case today. Most greeting cards strive for some sort of rhyming verse, and the world of advertising is replete with so much rhyme that it is impossible to escape it for more than a few moments at a time unless you turn off the power and sit in bed with your eyes closed. Try to think of random words as quickly as possible, or play the association game, and you will often find yourself slipping into rhyming sets of words. Our earliest stories contain rhyme, as do the first songs we hear and, it goes without saying, the nursery rhymes we all seem to have known for the duration of our conscious lives. However, the concept of rhyme is certainly one that has to be learned and applied to certain verbal situations which are governed by rules that are not always straightforward. I can actually remember taking home an assignment on rhyme and needing a little while to get the hang of it, and most of my classmates were in the same boat. And although rhyme seems completely intuitive to most adults, there are still certain kinds of similar sounding words that are on the borderline between rhyming and not rhyming, and exceptions to the usual rules that we have practiced for so long they have become almost automatic.
The type of rhyme we have become most familiar with is called masculine rhyme, and this occurs either between stressed mono-syllabic words, like fly and pie, or between words in which the rhyme falls on the stressed final syllable, like believe and conceive. Note that the first syllables in the last rhyming pair, be and con, have no sounds in common whatsoever, and are about as far from rhyming as two words could be. However, this does nothing to affect the fact that we still consider the two words of which they are a part to rhyme. This is because both of these leading syllables are unstressed, and we tend to skip over this mentally to get to the stressed aspect of the word.
Feminine rhyme, on the other hand, is somewhat less intuitive, and often produces comic effects, especially when used frequently in a given poem. Feminine rhyme occurs when the rhyme falls earlier in a word than the final syllable, and the final syllable is not stressed. Happy, crappy, and snappy form a trio of words that share a feminine rhyme. Note that in order for this to work, the unstressed syllables must also rhyme, or be identical to their counterparts in other words. Happen and crappy, for instance, do technically rhyme on their first syllables, happ and crapp, and these are the stressed syllables in the words, with en and y being unstressed. However, because the unstressed syllables do not rhyme with or mirror each other, these words are not considered rhyming words at all. Interestingly, feminine rhyme can build on large numbers of syllables, even those stretching across several words, making rhymes such as pandemonium and random-showy-bum potentially comical possibilities. Note that, as in the preceding case, the more syllables that rhyme, the less strict the rhyme needs to be on each syllable, and such "stretches" only add to the comic effect.
Masculine and Feminine Rhyme
Most people don't remember having to learn what rhyme is, since, for native English speakers at least, our faculty for rhyme seems very natural. If I hear a song on the radio, for instance, I will immediately notice whether it rhymes or not, and more often than not, I will notice a song that doesn't rhyme first, because that is the exception rather then the common case today. Most greeting cards strive for some sort of rhyming verse, and the world of advertising is replete with so much rhyme that it is impossible to escape it for more than a few moments at a time unless you turn off the power and sit in bed with your eyes closed. Try to think of random words as quickly as possible, or play the association game, and you will often find yourself slipping into rhyming sets of words. Our earliest stories contain rhyme, as do the first songs we hear and, it goes without saying, the nursery rhymes we all seem to have known for the duration of our conscious lives. However, the concept of rhyme is certainly one that has to be learned and applied to certain verbal situations which are governed by rules that are not always straightforward. I can actually remember taking home an assignment on rhyme and needing a little while to get the hang of it, and most of my classmates were in the same boat. And although rhyme seems completely intuitive to most adults, there are still certain kinds of similar sounding words that are on the borderline between rhyming and not rhyming, and exceptions to the usual rules that we have practiced for so long they have become almost automatic.
The type of rhyme we have become most familiar with is called masculine rhyme, and this occurs either between stressed mono-syllabic words, like fly and pie, or between words in which the rhyme falls on the stressed final syllable, like believe and conceive. Note that the first syllables in the last rhyming pair, be and con, have no sounds in common whatsoever, and are about as far from rhyming as two words could be. However, this does nothing to affect the fact that we still consider the two words of which they are a part to rhyme. This is because both of these leading syllables are unstressed, and we tend to skip over this mentally to get to the stressed aspect of the word.Feminine rhyme, on the other hand, is somewhat less intuitive, and often produces comic effects, especially when used frequently in a given poem. Feminine rhyme occurs when the rhyme falls earlier in a word than the final syllable, and the final syllable is not stressed. Happy, crappy, and snappy form a trio of words that share a feminine rhyme. Note that in order for this to work, the unstressed syllables must also rhyme, or be identical to their counterparts in other words. Happen and crappy, for instance, do technically rhyme on their first syllables, happ and crapp, and these are the stressed syllables in the words, with en and y being unstressed. However, because the unstressed syllables do not rhyme with or mirror each other, these words are not considered rhyming words at all. Interestingly, feminine rhyme can build on large numbers of syllables, even those stretching across several words, making rhymes such as pandemonium and random-showy-bum potentially comical possibilities. Note that, as in the preceding case, the more syllables that rhyme, the less strict the rhyme needs to be on each syllable, and such "stretches" only add to the comic effect.