On Different Types of Rhyme

So having defined a rhyme scheme, it occurs to me that we require another definition to make sense of that one: the definition of a rhyme.

I have in most of my definitional work here used the term rhyme sound rather than simply rhyme. This was not only to avoid confusion between too many uses of the single word rhyme, but also to define a rhyme in a sonnet against a specific type of rhyme, the eye rhyme. This "rhyme" is not a proper rhyme, as the words involved will have explicitly different sounds. Rather, the eye rhyme consists of two words that share a spelling of their final syllables but not the sound, and so look like they should rhyme (hence the name) but do not. Home and come, plough and tough, c'est and west: these are all eye rhymes. The definition can expand a little to include spellings that, while not identical, still look to the eyes like they would normally be pronounced the same way: Illinois and annoys, for instance. In any case, these are not rhymes, at least for the purposes of the sonnet, whose name, meaning "little song," serves as a hint to its primary concern with sound rather than sight. That does not mean they cannot be used for effect; rather, if they are, it means the two falsely rhymed words should be actually rhymed (obviously with different words) as well.

With that behind us, there are also differences in actual rhymes to be considered. The key one is the difference between masculine (one-syllable) and feminine (two-syllable) rhymes. A masculine rhyme has the same sound only in the last or only syllable of the final word: lady/baby, scorn/horn, school/fool, to borrow from Shakespeare's Benedick. A feminine rhyme has the same sound in the last two syllables of the word: assigner/diviner, wining/dining, carry/marry. It can also be created by adding the same word (or homonyms) to the end of two otherwise masculine rhymes: want to/haunt too, to be/newbie, cram it/damn it.

The main difference between the use of these rhyme types is in the flow of the poem: feminine rhymes, by using more syllables in the rhyme, emphasize the interconnectedness of the lines, and speed the reader through the poem by making more syllables predictable in some way; masculine rhymes are almost default, being easier, but therefore almost serve to get out of the reader's way, making the rhyming less marked. A feminine rhyme within enjambment is very marked to the reader, where an enjambed masculine rhyme has a very light touch. Poems may and should freely intermix types of (actual) rhymes for intentional effect. It is worth noting, finally, that feminine rhymes are less marked in feminine (11-syllable in iambic pentameter) lines, as the extra syllable is swallowed into the rhyme.