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List of English words without rhymes

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The following is a list of English words without rhymes, called refractory rhymes—that is, a list of words in the English language which rhyme with no other English word. The word "rhyme" here is used in the strict sense, called a perfect rhyme, that the words are pronounced the same from the vowel of the main stressed syllable onwards. The list was compiled from the point of view of Received Pronunciation (with a few exceptions for General American), and may not work for other accents or dialects. Multiple-word rhymes (a phrase that rhymes with a word, known as a phrasal or mosaic rhyme), self-rhymes (adding a prefix to a word and counting it as a rhyme of itself), and identical rhymes (words that are identical in their stressed syllables, such as bay and obey) are often not counted as true rhymes and have not been considered. Only the list of one-syllable words can hope to be anything near complete; for polysyllabic words, rhymes are the exception rather than the rule.

Contents

Definition of perfect rhyme

Following the strict definition of rhyme, a perfect rhyme demands the exact match of all sounds from the last stressed vowel to the end of the word. Therefore, words with the stress far from the end are more likely to have no perfect rhymes. For instance, a perfect rhyme for discomBOBulate would have to rhyme three syllables, -OBulate. There are many words that match most of the sounds from the stressed vowel onwards and so are near rhymes, called slant rhymes. Ovulate, copulate, and populate, for example, vary only slightly in one consonant, and thus provide very usable rhymes for most situations in which a rhyme for discombobulate is desired. However, no other English word has exactly these three final syllables with this stress pattern. And since in most traditions the stressed syllable should not be identical—the consonant before the stressed vowel should be different—adding a prefix to a word, as be-elbow for elbow, does not create a perfect rhyme for it.

Words that rhyme in one accent or dialect may not rhyme in another. A commonplace example of this is the word of, which when stressed had no rhymes in British Received Pronunciation prior to the 19th century, but which rhymed with love in General American. (When unstressed, it's a homonym for have.) In the other direction, iron has no rhyme in General American, but many in RP. Words may also have more than one pronunciation, one with a rhyme, and one without!

Words with obscure perfect rhymes

This list includes rhymes of words that have been listed as rhymeless.

  • aitch /ˈ-/, rhymes with dialectal nache (the bony point on the rump of an ox or cow) and one pronunciation of obsolete rache (a streak down a horse's face)
  • angst /ˈ-æŋkst/, rhymes with manxed. Phalanxed is not a perfect rhyme because the stress is on the wrong syllable. The alternative American pronunciation /ˈɑːŋkst/ has no rhymes
  • arugula /ˈ-ɡjələ/, rhymes with Bugula, a genus of bryozoan
  • beige /ˈbʒ/, rhymes with greige, an adjective referring to unfinished textiles which have not yet been dyed or bleached.
  • blitzed rhymes with spritzed, from spritz, to squirt with water or mist.
  • cairn, rhymes with bairn, a Northern English and Scottish word meaning child
  • chaos /ˈ-.ɒs/, rhymes with naos, the inner chamber of a temple
  • circle /ˈ-ɜːrkəl/, rhymes with hurkle, to pull in all one's limbs
  • circus /ˈ-ɜːrkəs/, rhymes with murcous, having cut off one's thumb
  • coif /ˈ-ɔɪf/, rhymes with boyf, slang for "boy-friend"
  • cusp /ˈ-ʌsp/, rhymes with DUSP, an acronym for "dual-specificity phosphatase enzyme"
  • else /ˈ-ɛls/, rhymes with wels, the fish Silurus glanis
  • fiends /ˈ-ndz/ rhymes with teinds, Scottish word for the portion of an estate assessed for the stipend of the clergy, and archaic Scottish piends
  • film, -s /ˈ-ɪlm, -z/ rhymes with pilm, Scottish word for dust. The plural films rhymes with Wilms, a kidney tumor
  • fugue, -s /ˈ-juːɡ, -z/ rhymes with jougs, which is rarely found in the singular
  • gulf, -s /ˈ-ʌlf, -s/ rhymes with SULF (pl. Sulfs), any of a number of sulfate-regulating enzymes
  • kiln, if pronounced /ˈ-ɪln/, rhymes with the surname Milne
  • eth /ˈ-ɛð/, rhymes with Castilian Spanish merced 'gift', which is occasionally used in English
  • midst /ˈ-ɪdst/, rhymes with didst, archaic for did (used with thou)
  • month /ˈ-ʌnθ/, rhymes with en-plus-oneth (n + 1)th, a mathematical term; also hundred-and-oneth (= hundred-and-first). This also appears in fractions, and so takes the plural, as in twenty thirty-oneths
  • music /ˈ-juːzk/, rhymes with anchusic, as in anchusic acid, dysgeusic, having a disorder that causes alterations in one's sense of taste, and ageusic, lacking a sense of taste
  • opus (with a short 0), /ˈ-ɒpəs/, rhymes with Hoppus, a method of measuring timber
  • orange /ˈ-ɒrn/, rhymes with Blorenge, a hill in Wales,
  • pint /ˈ-nt/, rhymes with rynt, a word milkmaids use to get a cow to move
  • plankton /ˈ-æŋktən/, rhymes with Yankton (Sioux)
  • plinth /ˈ-ɪnθ/, rhymes with synth, colloquial for synthesizer
  • purple /ˈ-ɜːrpəl/, rhymes with curple, the hindquarters of a horse or donkey, hirple, to walk with a limp,nurple, the act of roughly twisting a nipple (slang)
  • rhythm /ˈ-ɪðəm/, rhymes with smitham, fine malt or ore dust
  • silver /ˈ-ɪlvər/, rhymes with chilver, a female lamb
  • siren /ˈ-aɪərən/, rhymes with gyron, a type of triangle in heraldry, and a few technical terms
  • sylph, rhymes with MILF/milf, vulgar slang originating as an acronym for "mother I'd like to fuck" or similar phrase
  • toilet /ˈ-ɔɪlt/, rhymes with oillet, an eyelet
  • tufts, rhymes with scufts, the third-person singular form of the dialectal verb scuft
  • width /ˈ-ɪdθ/, rhymes with obsolete sidth, meaning length
  • woman /ˈ-ʊmən/, rhymes with toman (some pronunciations), a Persian coin and military division
  • yttrium /ˈ-ɪtriəm/, rhymes with liberum arbitrium, a legal term
  • Non-rhyming English words

    The majority of words with antepenultimate stress, such as animal, citizen, comedy, dangerous, and obvious, and with preantepenultimate stress, such as necessary, logarithm, algorithm and sacrificing, have no rhyme.

    Masculine rhymes

    Refractory one-syllable rhymes are uncommon; there may be fewer than a hundred in English. A great many end in a present or historical suffix -th, or are plural or participle forms. This list includes a few polysyllabic masculine rhymes such as oblige, which have one syllable in their rhyming part.

    1. adzed
    2. airt
    3. alb
    4. amongst
    5. angsts /ˈ-æŋksts/
    6. bilge
    7. borscht
    8. breadth, -s /ˈ-ɛdθ, -s/
    9. bronzed
    10. bulb, -s, -ed /ˈ-ʌlb, -d, -z/
    11. cleansed
    12. coolth
    13. corpsed
    14. culm
    15. delft
    16. depth, -s /ˈ-ɛpθ, -s/
    17. doth
    18. eighth
    19. false
    20. fifth, -s, -ed /ˈ-ɪfθ, -t, -s/
    21. filmed /ˈ-ɪlmd/
    22. flange
    23. fourths
    24. glimpsed /ˈ-ɪmpst/
    25. gouge(d)
    26. grilse
    27. (en)gulfed /ˈ-ʌlft/
    28. kilned
    29. kirsch /ˈ-ɪərʃ/
    30. loge
    31. midsts /ˈ-ɪdsts/
    32. morgue
    33. mulcts /ˈ-ʌlkts/
    34. ninth, -s /ˈ-nθ, -s/
    35. oblige, -ed /ˈ-, -d/
    36. oomph
    37. pierced
    38. prompts
    39. quaich
    40. rouged
    41. scarce /ˈ-ɛərs/
    42. sculpts /ˈ-ʌlpts/
    43. sowthed, southed /ˈ-θt/
    44. sixth, -s /ˈ-ɪksθ, -s/
    45. spoilt
    46. stilb
    47. swoln
    48. torsk
    49. traipsed
    50. twelfth, -s /ˈ-ɛlfθ, -s/ The "f" in "twelfth" is commonly elided in casual speech, causing "twelfth" to rhyme with "health" and "wealth".
    51. unbeknownst
    52. vuln, -s, -ed /ˈ-ʌln, -d, -z/
    53. waltzed
    54. warmth
    55. whilst /ˈ-lst/
    56. wolf, -s, -ed /ˈ-ʊlf, -t, -s/
    57. wolve, -s, -d /ˈ-ʊlv, -d, -z/
    58. worlds
    59. wounds
    60. yoicks

    pork /ˈ-ɔərk/ has no rhymes in conservative RP and GA. However, the distinction between horse and hoarse has been mostly lost in younger generations, and for them and many others pork which was an exception to the normal rule, now rhymes with fork, cork, etc. (/ˈ-ɔːrk/) The OED no longer lists "/pɔək/" as an alternative pronunciation in its third edition.

    Nonce words ending in -ed ('provided with') may produce other potentially refractory masculine rhymes. There are additional words which are only partially assimilated into English, such as Russian kovsh /ˈkɒvʃ/, which are refractory rhymes.

    Although not meant as a complete list, there are some additional refractory rhymes in GA. Some of these are due to RP being a non-rhotic accent, and having merged rhymes formerly distinguished by /r/.

    1. heighth, -s /ˈ-tθ, -s/
    2. iron /ˈ-aɪərn/
    3. karsts /ˈ-ɑːrsts/

    Feminine rhymes

    For feminine rhymes, the final two syllables must match to count as a rhyme. Once the stress shifts to the penultimate syllable, rhymeless words are quite common, perhaps even the norm: there may be more rhymeless words than words with rhymes. The following words are representative, but there are thousands of others.

    1. angel
    2. angry
    3. anxious
    4. chimney
    5. comment
    6. elbow
    7. empty
    8. engine
    9. foible
    10. foyer
    11. hundred(th)
    12. husband
    13. liquid
    14. luggage
    15. monster
    16. neutron
    17. nothing
    18. olive
    19. penguin
    20. polka
    21. problem
    22. sanction
    23. sandwich
    24. secret
    25. something
    26. zigzag

    References

    List of English words without rhymes Wikipedia


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