List of English words without rhymes


The following is a list of English words without rhymes, called refractory rhymes—that is, a list of words in the English language that rhyme with no other English word. The word "rhyme" here is used in the strict sense, called a perfect rhyme, that the words are pronounced the same from the vowel of the main stressed syllable onwards. The list was compiled from the point of view of Received Pronunciation, and may not work for other accents or dialects. Multiple-word rhymes, self-rhymes, and identical rhymes are often not counted as true rhymes and have not been considered. Only the list of one-syllable words can hope to be anything near complete; for polysyllabic words, rhymes are the exception rather than the rule.

Definition of ''perfect rhyme''

Following the strict definition of rhyme, a perfect rhyme demands the exact match of all sounds from the last stressed vowel to the end of the word. Therefore, words with the stress far from the end are more likely to have no perfect rhymes. For instance, a perfect rhyme for discomBOBulate would have to rhyme three syllables, -OBulate. There are many words that match most of the sounds from the stressed vowel onwards and so are near rhymes, called slant rhymes. Ovulate, copulate, and populate, for example, vary only slightly in one consonant from discombobulate, and thus provide very usable rhymes for most situations in which a rhyme for discombobulate is desired. However, no other English word has exactly these three final syllables with this stress pattern. And since in most traditions the stressed syllable should not be identical—the consonant before the stressed vowel should be different—adding a prefix to a word, as be-elbow for elbow, does not create a perfect rhyme for it.
Words that rhyme in one accent or dialect may not rhyme in another. A commonplace example of this is the word of, which when stressed had no rhymes in British Received Pronunciation prior to the 19th century, but which rhymed with grave and mauve in some varieties of General American. In the other direction, iron has no rhyme in General American, but many in RP. Words may also have more than one pronunciation, one with a rhyme, and one without.

Words with obscure perfect rhymes

This list includes rhymes of words that have been listed as rhymeless.
The majority of words with antepenultimate stress, such as animal, citizen, dangerous and obvious, and with stress, such as necessary, logarithm, algorithm and sacrificing, have no rhyme.

Masculine rhymes

Refractory one-syllable rhymes are uncommon; there may be fewer than a hundred in English. A great many end in a present or historical suffix -th, or are plural or participle forms. This list includes a few polysyllabic masculine rhymes such as obliged, which have one syllable in their rhyming part.
  1. '
  2. '
  3. ' /-ælb/
  4. ' /-ʌŋst/
  5. '
  6. '
  7. '
  8. '
  9. borshch /- ɔrʃtʃ/
  10. , -s
  11. '
  12. , -s, -ed
  13. '
  14. '
  15. '
  16. '
  17. '
  18. , -s
  19. '
  20. '
  21. , -s
  22. '
  23. '
  24. , -ed, -s
  25. '
  26. '
  27. '
  28. '
  29. '
  30. '
  31. '
  32. '
  33. '
  34. , -s
  35. '
  36. '
  37. '
  38. '
  39. ' or
  40. '
  41. '
  42. , -s
  43. ,
  44. '
  45. '
  46. '
  47. '
  48. , -s The "f" in "twelfth" is commonly elided in casual speech, causing "twelfth" to rhyme with "health" and "wealth".
  49. '
  50. , -ed, -s
  51. '
  52. '
  53. '
  54. , -ed, -s
  55. , -d, -s
  56. '
  57. '
  58. ', , -s
' has no rhymes in conservative RP and GA. However, the distinction between horse and hoarse has been mostly lost in younger generations, and for them and many others pork which was an exception to the normal rule, now rhymes with fork, cork, etc.. The OED no longer lists as an alternative pronunciation in its third edition.
Nonce words ending in -ed may produce other potentially refractory masculine rhymes. There are additional words which are only partially assimilated into English, such as Russian ', which are refractory rhymes.
The contraction ' has no known rhymes in any English dialect, however the legitimacy of contractions as a single word is disputed. Regardless of this, daren't lacks both perfect rhymes and phrasal rhymes.
Although not meant as a complete list, there are some additional refractory rhymes in GA. Some of these are due to RP being a non-rhotic accent, and having merged rhymes formerly distinguished by.
  1. , -s
  2. '
  3. '

    Feminine rhymes

For feminine rhymes, the final two syllables must match to count as a rhyme. Once the stress shifts to the penultimate syllable, rhymeless words are quite common, perhaps even the norm: there may be more rhymeless words than words with rhymes. The following words are representative, but there are thousands of others.
  1. '
  2. '
  3. '
  4. '
  5. '
  6. '
  7. '
  8. '
  9. '
  10. '
  11. '
  12. '
  13. '
  14. '
  15. '
  16. '
  17. '
  18. '
  19. '
  20. '
  21. '
  22. '
  23. '
  24. '