rhyme
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "rhyme", 5-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "rhyme" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "rhyme" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
rhyme is aEnglishnoun. It means: Rhyming verse (poetic form) Pronounced /ɹaɪm/. Often confused with rye and Rome.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | rhyme |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ɹaɪm/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #13,800 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 9 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for rhyme is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɹaɪm/. Corpus data places it at rank #13,800 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 9 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 8 documented wrong-spelling variants for rhyme, with forms such as "hryme", "rhhyme", and "rhmye". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 9 confusable-pair relationships, "rye", "Rome", "Rhys", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English rim, rime, ryme (“identical letters or sounds in words from the vowel in their stressed syllables to their ends; measure, meter, rhythm; song, verse, etc., with rhyming lines”), from Anglo-Norman rime, ryme (“identical letters or sounds … Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is rhyme, spelled R-H-Y-M-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Rhyming verse (poetic form)
- 2A thought expressed in verse; a verse; a poem; a tale told in verse.
- 3A word that rhymes with another.
- 4A word that rhymes with another.
- 5Rhyming: sameness of letters or sounds of part of some words.
- 6The second part of a syllable, from the vowel on, as opposed to the onset.
- 7An instance of rapping; a rapped verse; a line or couple lines of rapping; a hip hop song.
- 8A rapper's oeuvre, lyricism or skill.
- 9Number.
Etymology
From Middle English rim, rime, ryme (“identical letters or sounds in words from the vowel in their stressed syllables to their ends; measure, meter, rhythm; song, verse, etc., with rhyming lines”), from Anglo-Norman rime, ryme (“identical letters or sounds in words from the vowel in their stressed syllables to their ends; song, verse, etc., with rhyming lines”) (modern French rime); further etymology uncertain, possibly either: * from Latin rhythmus (“rhythm”), from Ancient Greek ῥῠθμός (rhŭthmós, “measured motion, rhythm; regular, repeating motion, vibration”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *srew- (“to flow; a stream”); or * borrowed from Frankish *rīm (“number, order, sequence, series, row of identical things”) (whence Old English rīm (“number, enumeration, series”)), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂rey- (“to arrange; to count”) and *h₂er- (“to fit, put together; to fix; to slot”). Cognates * Ancient Greek ἀριθμός (arithmós, “number”) * Dutch rijm (“rhyme”) * Middle Low German rīm (“rhyme”) * Old Frisian rīm (“number, amount, tale”) * Old High German rīm (“series, row, number”) (modern German Reim (“rhyme”)) * Old Irish rīm (“number”) * Old Norse rím (“calculation, calendar”) (Icelandic rím (“rhyme”), Norwegian rim (“rhyme”), Swedish rim (“rhyme”)) * Welsh rhif (“number”)
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: hryme,rhhyme,rhmye,rhyem,rhymme,rhyyme,rrhyme,ryhme
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for rhyme
Misspelling Variants of "rhyme"
Frequency rank: #13,800 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter R in our English index: