Rhyme Scheme Glossary

To view types of rhymes, see: The Rhyme 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.

Poetry and Quotations