Glossary of Rhyme Usage - Schemes

To view types of rhymes, see the Rhyme Glossary

This page lists all the possible ways rhymes are used within poetry and other writings. They are known as rhyme schemes or usages. Here is the glossary:

Apocopate rhyme

Rhyming a line and with the penultimate syllable.

Broken rhyme

Rhyme using more than one word or broken over the line and into the next.

Caesural rhyme (interlaced)

Rhymes that occur at the caesura and line end within pairs -- like an abab quatrain printed as two lines.

Crossed rhyme (alternating, interlocking)

Rhyming in abab pattern.

End rhyme (terminal)

Rhymes at the end of a line.

Envelope rhyme (inserted)

Rhyming abba -- like a memoriam stanza.

Initial rhyme (head)

A rhyme at the beginning of a line.

Intermittent rhyme

A rhyme every other line -- like a standard ballad quatrain, xaxa.

Internal rhyme

Rhyme that occurs within a line.

Irregular rhyme

Rhyming in no pattern -- pseudo-pindaric (irregular) ode.

Leonine rhyme (medial)

The rhyme is at the caesura and at the end of the same line -- like a couplet but as one line.

Linked rhyme

Rhyme that depends on completing the rhyme by enjambment over the end line.

Rhyme royal

A seven-line iambic pentameter stanza rhyming ababbcc

Sporadic rhyme (occasional)

Rhyming unpredictably in an unrhymed poem.

Thorn line

Line without a rhyme in a rhymed passage/poem.