Perfect and imperfect rhymes#Imperfect rhyme

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Half rhyme or imperfect rhyme, sometimes called bastard rhyme, near-rhyme, lazy rhyme, or slant rhyme, is a type of rhyme formed by words with similar but not identical sounds. In most instances, the vowel segments are different and the consonants are identical or vice versa. This type of rhyme is also called approximate rhyme, inexact rhyme, imperfect rhyme (in contrast to perfect rhyme), off rhyme, analyzed rhyme, suspended rhyme, or sprung rhyme.{{cite book|author=Ian Ousby|title=The Cambridge Paperback Guide to Literature in English|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=43oBE1nJXaMC&pg=PA8|access-date=20 May 2013|date=23 February 1996|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-43627-4|pages=8}}{{cite web|url=http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_S.html |title=Literary Terms and Definitions S |publisher=Web.cn.edu |access-date=2013-05-20}}{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cRcnBQAAQBAJ&q=sprung+rhyme|title=A Guidebook to Paradise Lost|last=Nutt|first=Joe|date=2011-10-03|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|isbn=9781137267931|language=en}}{{Cite web |url=http://www.examiner.com/article/gerald-manley-hopkins-sprung-rhyme-information|title=Gerald Manley Hopkins Sprung Rhyme Information|last=Ward|first=Jean Elizabeth|date=2010-10-11|publisher=AXS TV|access-date=2016-08-03}}

In the 1977 song "God Save the Queen" by the English punk rock band the Sex Pistols, the authors create a rhyme with the lines "God save the queen" and "the fascist regime".Archived at [https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211205/6EGLwP2SO1A Ghostarchive]{{cbignore}} and the [https://web.archive.org/web/20151102143404/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EGLwP2SO1A Wayback Machine]{{cbignore}}: {{cite web| url = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EGLwP2SO1A| title = The Sex Pistols - Never Mind The Bollocks | website=YouTube}}{{cbignore}}

The 1979 song "Up the Junction" by the English new wave band Squeeze makes extensive use of half-rhyme. The opening verse, for example:

I never thought it would happen

With me and a girl from Clapham

Out on the windy common

That night I ain't forgotten

{{see also|Rapping#Rhyme}}

Half rhyme is often used, along with assonance, in rap music. That can be used to avoid rhyming clichés (e.g., rhyming knowledge with college) or obvious rhymes and can give the writer greater freedom and flexibility in forming lines of verse. Additionally, some words have no perfect rhyme in English, necessitating the use of slant rhyme.{{cite web |url=http://bookbuilder.cast.org/view_print.php?book=29669 |title=Exploring Modern Day Poetry (aka Hip-Hop) |access-date=31 Mar 2014}} The use of half rhyme may also enable the construction of longer multisyllabic rhymes than is otherwise possible.{{Cite web|date=2018-04-10|title=The poetry of hip hop: A playlist for your classroom|url=https://britannicalearn.com/blog/classroom-hip-hop-playlist/|access-date=2021-03-24|website=Britannica|language=en-US}}

In the following lines from the song "N.Y. State of Mind" by the rapper Nas, the author uses half rhyme in a complex cross rhyme pattern:

And be prosperous, though we live dangerous

Cops could just arrest me, blamin' us, we're held like hostages

The children's nursery rhyme This Little Piggy displays an unconventional (in most modern dialects) slant rhyme. Home is rhymed with none. This is because in Early modern English these words often rhymed. In some dialects of Northern English English, these still rhyme.

This little piggy stayed (at) home...this little piggy had none.

In The Hives' song "Dead Quote Olympics", the singer Howlin' Pelle Almqvist rhymes idea with library:{{Cite web|url=https://theassommoir.wordpress.com/tag/hives/|title=Hives}}Archived at [https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211205/mN2jDzhwv7s Ghostarchive]{{cbignore}} and the [https://web.archive.org/web/20150812083742/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN2jDzhwv7s&feature=youtu.be Wayback Machine]{{cbignore}}: {{cite web| url = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN2jDzhwv7s| title = The Hives - Dead Quote Olympics | website=YouTube}}{{cbignore}}

This time you really got something, it's such a clever idea

But it doesn't mean it's good because you found it at the libra-ri-a

• Holorime
• Internal rhyme
• Monorhyme
• Rime riche

• Smith, M., Joshi, A. (2020). Rhymes in the Flow: How Rappers Flip the Beat. United States: University of Michigan Press.
• The Princeton Handbook of Poetic Terms: Third Edition. (2016). United States: Princeton University Press.
• Lasser, M. (2019). City Songs and American Life, 1900-1950. United Kingdom: University of Rochester Press.
• Barnes, W. (1854). A Philological Grammar: Grounded Upon English, and Formed from a Comparison of More Than Sixty Languages. Being an Introduction to the Science of Grammar and a Help to Grammars of All Languages, Especially English, Latin and Greek. United Kingdom: J. R. Smith.
• Stoker, J. (2015). Slant Rhyme. United Kingdom: Xlibris US.

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Rhyme