Rhyme

How to spell rhyme

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce rhyme

What does rhyme mean?

1. nounA correspondence of sound between the endings of words, especially in poetry or song.
2. verbTo have or end with a sound that matches that of another word.

Rhyme in a sentence

• noun

  The children's book was written entirely in rhyme.

• verb

  The poet chose 'moon' because it would rhyme with 'spoon'.

• noun

  The last two lines of the poem end in a perfect rhyme.

• verb

  Few English words rhyme neatly with 'orange'.

Where does rhyme come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word arrived in Middle English around the 1200s as 'rime', borrowed from Old French 'rime', meaning a verse or series of verses. The Old French form goes back to Latin 'rhythmus' and ultimately to Greek 'rhythmos', meaning 'measured flow' or 'recurring movement', which is also the source of the word 'rhythm'. For centuries the English word was spelled 'rime' with no 'h', reflecting its true Germanic-influenced pronunciation. The fancy spelling 'rhyme', with the silent 'rh', was introduced by scholars in the 1600s who wrongly assumed the word should mirror its distant cousin 'rhythm' and so re-Latinised it. That learned tinkering is exactly why the modern spelling carries a silent 'h' that the ear never hears, making it a quiet trap. The older spelling 'rime' still survives as a separate word meaning frost, which is a true homophone.

How the word is built

• rhyme (a sound correspondence at the ends of words); the silent 'h' is a later learned insertion modelled on 'rhythm'