initial rhyme


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initial rhyme

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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Noun1.initial rhyme - use of the same consonant at the beginning of each stressed syllable in a line of verse; "around the rock the ragged rascal ran"
rhyme, rime - correspondence in the sounds of two or more lines (especially final sounds)
Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2012 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.
References in periodicals archive ?
It does not always stand at the end of the line: one finds initial rhyme alongside end rhyme, and internal ("middle") rhyme, even though the placement at the end of a line claims greater compositional meaning, since end rhyme designates (serves as a marker of) the line's boundary, and likewise its structural relationship to the remaining lines (the stanzaic structure).
In the case of Pearl this means not only end-rhyme, but also alliteration or initial rhyme and refrain with link word.
Rhyme is also distinguished according to its position in the poem as follows: end rhyme, in which the rhyme occurs at the ends of lines; internal rhyme, in which at least one rhyme occurs within the line (as in Wilde's " Each narrow cell in which we dwell " ); initial rhyme, in which the rhyme occurs as the first word or syllable of the line; cross rhyme, in which the rhyme occurs at the end of one line and in the middle of the next; and random rhyme, in which the rhymes seem to occur accidentally in any combination of the foregoing, often mixed with unrhymed lines.

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