Perfect rhyme

Perfect rhyme — also called full rhyme, exact rhyme,^[1] or true rhyme — is a form of rhyme between two words or phrases, satisfying the following conditions:^[2][3]

• The stressed vowel sound in both words must be identical, as well as any subsequent sounds. For example, "sky" and "high"; "skylight" and "highlight".
• The articulation that precedes the vowel in the words must differ. For example, "bean" and "green" is a perfect rhyme, while "leave" and "believe" is not.

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.^[3]

See also

• Mono rhyme
• Imperfect rhyme
• Rime riche
• Rhyme

References

1. Glossary of Poetic Terms from BOB'S BYWAY, Letter E
2. Alexander Bain (1867). English Composition and Rhetoric. New York: D. Appleton and company. p. 290.
3. Sheila Davis (1984). The Craft of Lyric Writing. Writer's Digest Books. p. 185. ISBN 9780898791495.