Rime riche (French for “rich rhyme”) is a sophisticated type of rhyme in which not only the final stressed vowel and any following sounds match, but also the preceding consonant or consonant cluster, resulting in homophonic or near-homophonic word pairs (e.g., “right”/“write” or “vain”/“vein”); prized in French poetry for its sonic density and intellectual elegance, rime riche creates a heightened sense of unity and artifice, often used to underscore thematic doubleness, irony, or the slippage between sound and meaning, and it demands exceptional lexical control from the poet.

Rhyme identical in sound and spelling but different in meaning. Perfect homophonic match creating pun. French specialty; study with holorime and constraint poetry.