Slant rhyme
A slant rhyme, also called a near or half rhyme, is a pairing of words whose sounds almost match, sharing either the vowel or the consonants but not both, as in worm and warm or heart and hurt.
Take the pairs "stone" and "stain", "heart" and "hurt", "give" and "leave". They almost rhyme, and the ear notices that they almost do. That near miss is a slant rhyme.
How it differs from a perfect rhyme
A perfect rhyme matches from the last stressed vowel onward: "heart" and "part". A slant rhyme keeps part of that match. There are two main kinds.
- Matching consonants, different vowels. "Heart" and "hurt", "tell" and "toll". This is consonance at the line end.
- Matching vowels, different consonants. "Home" and "stone", "time" and "mine". This borrows from assonance.
What it does
Slant rhyme keeps the shape of a rhyme scheme while loosening its sound. It avoids the sing-song feel of tidy rhymes and lets the poet choose the better word instead of the one that matches. In the war poems of Wilfred Owen, the failure to fully chime suits subjects that are not resolved.
Why it matters to a writer or editor
If you are editing a rhymed poem full of forced matches, slant rhyme is often the fix. Swapping a perfect rhyme for a near one can free a line to say what it means.
The rule is to be consistent: if a poem uses perfect rhyme throughout and slips into a slant one at the end, the reader hears it as a mistake unless the change is meant. If the whole poem uses near rhymes, the pattern becomes a style. A couplet is where a slant rhyme is easiest to hear.
Read an example
Read an example: Wilfred Owen rhymes "escaped" with "scooped" and "groined" with "groaned". The vowels shift, but the consonants hold.
It seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,Wilfred Owen, "Strange Meeting", 1919
You can hunt for near rhymes of your own in the Bossfeed daily poem archive.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between slant rhyme and perfect rhyme?
A perfect rhyme repeats the vowel and everything after it, as in light and night. A slant rhyme matches only part of that, such as light and late.
Is slant rhyme the same as assonance or consonance?
Related. Assonance repeats vowel sounds and consonance repeats consonant sounds. A slant rhyme is a rhyme built from one or the other at the end of lines.
Who made slant rhyme famous?
Emily Dickinson used it often, and Wilfred Owen built war poems on it, where the near miss gave an uneasy edge.