A perfect rhyme — also called a full rhyme, exact rhyme, or true rhyme — is a rhyme in which the later part of the word or phrase is identical sounding to that of another.
The following conditions are required for a rhyme to be perfect:
- The vowel sound in both words must be identical. — e.g. "sky" and high"
- The articulation that precedes the vowel sound must differ. "leave" and "believe" is an imperfect rhyme, whereas "green" and "spleen" are perfect rhymes.
Word pairs that satisfy the first condition but not the second (such as the aforementioned "leave" and "believe") are technically identities (also known as identical rhymes or identicals). Homophones are sometimes classified as identical rhymes, though the classification isn't entirely accurate.
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Famous quotes containing the words perfect and/or rhyme:
“Art is not tame, and Nature is not wild, in the ordinary sense. A perfect work of man’s art would also be wild or natural in a good sense.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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