Nuts and Bolts: pararhymes.

A pararhyme is a sort of rhyme - the sort of rhyme, in fact, that doesn't actually...well, rhyme.

A rhyme is where you have two or more words with the same final vowel sound and final consonant sound: hat, mat, cat, sat, for example, or more sore door. Or orange, sporange.

A pararhyme is where the consonants are the same, but the vowel sound is different: fire, fore, for example, or bet, bat, or clonk clank.

To be a pararhyme, all the consonants have to be the same, not just the final one. Otherwise it's a half-rhyme.

Pararhymes are obligatory in Welsh cynghanedd poetry, and their use in English has been a particular feature of poets with experience of living in Wales, such as Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves.

The general effect is rather like running across a ploughed field. 

But then that's one of the excitements of life.

Words To Use Today: a pararhyme. Why not see if you can get one into the most boring piece of writing you have to do today. 

The term pararhyme was coined by the poet Edmund Blunden. The word rhyme comes from the Old High German rīm, which means a number. (The silly spelling is mostly because of the Greek-derived spelling of the word rhythm.)