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mirror rhyme

Rhyme
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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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 scheme that exhibits symmetrical or palindromic repetition, creating formal balance and structural echo.

Detailed Definition
Mirror rhyme occurs when the end sounds of two lines are phonetically reversed or mirrored—such as “stop” and “pots”—creating a playful or uncanny sonic symmetry that draws attention to language’s plasticity and the poem’s crafted artificiality rather than conventional rhyming logic.
Example
Example in poetry:
A rhyme where the two rhyming words are palindromic or near-palindromic, e.g., 'live' and 'evil' (not usually used in this sense); A rhyme pair that is the same word repeated, e.g., 'We saw the moon / Soon came the moon'; A pair of words where the spelling or sound is nearly reversed, such as 'lap' and 'pal'; A rare type of rhyme where the final syllable of the first line rhymes with the initial syllable of the next line, or where the rhyme is internal and reflects the end-rhyme.
Additional Notes
mirror rhyme: A form of internal or end rhyme where the rhyming words are structurally symmetrical, such as rhyming the first word of line A with the last word of line B, and the last word of A with the first word of B.
Also Known As
Reflective rhyme echo rhyme reversible rhyme Catoptric rhyme inverted rhyme palindrome rhyme Two-sided rhyme Crisscross rhyme palindromic rhyme ABBA rhyme
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