Home › Glossary › Letter A

Auricular rhyme

Sound
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A rhyme type that depends on auditory resemblance rather than spelling, so that words sound alike to the ear; it allows for flexible rhyme including pararhymes, near-rhymes, and dialectal variants.

Detailed Definition
Auricular rhyme emphasizes sound patterns that appeal to the ear’s sensitivity—subtle internal echoes, half-rhymes, or phonetic harmonies—prioritizing auditory pleasure over visual or orthographic rhyme; it’s central to lyric poetry that values musicality, as in Keats or Hopkins.
Example
Example in poetry:
Auricular rhyme: Rhyme perceived by ear rather than eye (slant rhyme); e.g., “prove” / “love” in Shakespeare, which rhymed in Early Modern English pronunciation.
Additional Notes
Rhyme appreciated primarily through hearing rather than eye. True phonetic correspondence versus visual similarity. Contrast with eye rhyme. Essential for oral performance poetry. Test by reading aloud.
Also Known As
Ear rhyme phonetic rhyme heard rhyme aural correspondence
Skip to main content