forced rhyme
Strained verse ending
A forced rhyme is a rhyme that feels awkward or unnatural because the poet has sacrificed clarity or natural word order to achieve it.
The rhyming word seems chosen for sound rather than sense, or the sentence gets twisted to make the rhyme land: His love was like a burning fire / For which he felt a strong desire.
The term is always pejorative—good rhymes feel inevitable, forced rhymes feel like compromises.
Deliberately manufactured, unnatural
- stiltedUnnaturally formal in expression
- awkwardLacking grace or ease
- unnaturalContrary to normal order
- laboredRequiring great exertion
clumsy · jarring · tortured · ham-fisted · heavy-handed · inelegant · strained · grating
Two successive verse lines
- meterDevice that measures usage
- scansionAnalyzing verse rhythm patterns
- verseMetered poetic passage
- stanzaPoem's line grouping
cadence · assonance · consonance · syllable · stressed · unstressed · iambic · trochaic
Written words for music
- songwritingCreating lyrics and melodies
- verseMetered poetic passage
- rapQuick sharp blow
- hip-hopRhythmic spoken-word music
freestyle · battle rap · jingle · limerick · greeting card · doggerel · light verse · parody
contrived
Deliberately manufactured, unnatural
- stiltedUnnaturally formal in expression
- awkwardLacking grace or ease
- unnaturalContrary to normal order
labored · clumsy · jarring · tortured · ham-fisted · heavy-handed · inelegant · strained · grating · shoehorned
couplet
Two successive verse lines
stanza · cadence · assonance · consonance · syllable · stressed · unstressed · iambic · trochaic · anapest
lyrics
Written words for music
- songwritingCreating lyrics and melodies
- verseMetered poetic passage
- rapQuick sharp blow
hip-hop · freestyle · battle rap · jingle · limerick · greeting card · doggerel · light verse · parody · novelty song
- RhymeABBA, monorhyme, couplet, couplets
- writing flawstypos, spelling errors, plot hole, plot holes, cliche
- near rhymes
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