List of English words without rhymes

Template:Short description 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 (with a few exceptions for General American), and may not work for other accents or dialects. Multiple-word rhymes (a phrase that rhymes with a word, known as a phrasal or mosaic rhyme), self-rhymes (adding a prefix to a word and counting it as a rhyme of itself), imperfect rhymes (such as purple with circle), and identical rhymes (words that are identical in their stressed syllables, such as bay and obey) 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; there are many disyllabic or polysyllabic words without rhymes.

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.<ref>OED search for pronunciations ending in "*QbjUleIt".</ref> 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 Template:IPAc-en, 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.<ref>In RP, stressed of currently has the rhymes sov, short for sovereign, and Sov, short for Soviet.</ref> 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.

Non-rhyming English words

Template:More citations needed section The majority of words with antepenultimate stress, such as ambulance,<ref>Online first-aid video teaches baby CPR with nursery rhymes, SBS News 2016. The inability of the characters to rhyme "ambulance" is made into a plot point which they solve by mispronouncing it.</ref> citizen, dangerous and obvious, are non-rhyming. Also, most words with preantepenultimate stress, such as (un)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.<ref>In the August 1980 Kickshaws,[1] Howard Bergerson listed 55, but rhymes have been found for some of them.[2]
Apart from those listed under 'obscure rhymes' above, these are,
beards – weirds; filched – obs. milched, dial. pilched, slang zilched; fluxed – bruxed, betuxed (dressed in a tux), dial. muxed; jinxed – sphinxed, obs. nonce minxed; lairds – cairds (both Scottish); leashed – schottisched, niched (one pronunciation), Sc. creeshed; mouthed – southed (alt. pronunciation in Dict.com, but not OED); mulched – gulched; puss (cat, face) – wuss, schuss; scalds – tech. faulds, obs. balds, Sc. caulds & spauld; tenth/s – nth/s; tufts – Crufts, yufts (Russian leather).</ref> 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.<ref>Though Cole reported a phrasal rhyme in "Elijah knew, oblige a Jew".</ref>

1. adzed Template:IPAc-en
2. alb /-ælb/<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> (rhymes with some pronunciations of the proper noun "Kalb"<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> in the name of Johann de Kalb)
3. amongst /-ʌŋst/ ("quincunxed" qualifies apart from the final syllable being unstressed)
4. angsts Template:IPAc-en<ref>The alternative American pronunciation Template:IPAc-en has no rhymes even in the singular.</ref>
5. bilge Template:IPAc-en
6. boinged Template:IPAc-en
7. breadth, -s Template:IPAc-en
8. bronzed Template:IPAc-en
9. bulb, -s, -ed Template:IPAc-en<ref>Bulb can be assumed to rhyme with culb, an obsolete word (and hapax legomenon) for a glass distillation vessel attested without pronunciation from 1683.</ref>
10. calced Template:IPAc-en (may rhyme with "valsed" in British English, according to the Oxford English Dictionary)
11. combs (combinations) Template:IPAc-en
12. coolth Template:IPAc-en
13. corpsed Template:IPAc-en
14. delft Template:IPAc-en
15. depth, -s Template:IPAc-en
16. dumbth Template:IPAc-en
17. eighth, -s Template:IPAc-en
18. excerpts (verb) Template:IPAc-en
19. false Template:IPAc-en<ref>In GA, this rhymes with Hals, a neighborhood in Passau, Germany.</ref>
20. fifth, -ed, -s Template:IPAc-en (has rhymes for those who drop the f or th)
21. filmed Template:IPAc-en<ref name="ReferenceA">The plural films rhymes with Wilms, a German surname, and a kidney tumor.</ref>
22. glimpsed Template:IPAc-en
23. goonch Template:IPAc-en
24. gouge(d) Template:IPAc-en
25. (en)gulfed Template:IPAc-en
26. kilned Template:IPAc-en (but not when pronounced as Template:IPAc-en)
27. kirsch Template:IPAc-en
28. midsts Template:IPAc-en
29. mulcts Template:IPAc-en<ref>The infinitive mulct rhymes with sulked, bulked, etc.</ref>
30. ninth, -s Template:IPAc-en
31. obliged Template:IPAc-en
32. obvs Template:IPAc-en
33. oomph Template:IPAc-en
34. pierced Template:IPAc-en
35. prompts Template:IPAc-en or Template:IPAc-en
36. scarce Template:IPAc-en
37. sculpts Template:IPAc-en
38. sixth, -s Template:IPAc-en
39. sowthed, southed Template:IPAc-en<ref>As Template:IPA. The verbs sowthed (as in sowthed a tune) and southed (pointed south) are identical and therefore not considered rhymes to each other. Phrases like foul-mouthed Template:IPA, though close, have the wrong stress to be perfect rhymes. Sowths, souths rhyme with mouth's. (Southed but not sowthed is also pronounced Template:IPA, which rhymes with mouthed.)</ref>
40. spoilt Template:IPAc-en
41. stilb Template:IPAc-en
42. sudsed Template:IPAc-en<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
43. swoln Template:IPAc-en
44. traipsed Template:IPAc-en
45. twelfth, -s Template:IPAc-en The "f" in "twelfth" is commonly elided in casual speech, causing "twelfth" to rhyme with "health" and "wealth".
46. unbeknownst Template:IPAc-en
47. vuln, -ed, -s Template:IPAc-en
48. warmth Template:IPAc-en
49. whilst Template:IPAc-en
50. with Template:IPAc-en (the word is also pronounced with Template:IPAc-en, in which case it has rhymes like "pith")
51. wolf, -ed, -s Template:IPAc-en
52. wolve, -d, -s Template:IPAc-en
53. worlds Template:IPAc-en
54. wounds Template:IPAc-en

pork Template:IPAc-en and forge Template:IPAc-en have no rhymes in conservative RP.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> 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 and cork (Template:IPAc-en), while forge now rhymes with gorge. The OED no longer lists Template:IPA as an alternative pronunciation in its third edition.

Nonce words ending in -ed ('provided with') may produce other potentially refractory masculine rhymes.<ref>Some promising words are befezzed (wearing a fez) and bemusicked, though the first rhymes with Yezd.</ref> There are additional words which are only partially assimilated into English, such as Russian kovsh Template:IPA, which are refractory rhymes.

The contraction daren't Template:IPAc-en 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 Template:IPA.

1. heighth, -s Template:IPAc-en<ref>Colloquial GA heighth is Template:IPA. In RP, highth Template:IPA rhymes with dryth (= drought), rithe, etc., but is obsolete.</ref>
2. iron Template:IPAc-en<ref>Two syllables, Template:IPAc-en, for many speakers. In RP, this rhymes with lion, cyan, Zion, etc.</ref>
3. karsts Template:IPAc-en<ref>In RP, this rhymes with fasts.</ref>

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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The following words are representative, but there are thousands of others.

1. angel
2. angry <ref>This has a derived rhyme in hangry, and also rhymes with the first part of Shangri-la.</ref>
3. anxious
4. comment
5. empty <ref>In the song "I Like the Way" by Darren Hayes, this is rhymed with the nonce word "temptee", i.e. one who is tempted, in the line "But temptation tempts the temptee".</ref>
6. engine <ref>If apostrophic rhymes are accepted, this could be said to rhyme with "avengin'". In the pin-pen merger, engine would rhyme with "syringin."</ref>
7. foible
8. foyer<ref>British pronunciation Template:IPAc-en or Template:IPAc-en only. The US pronunciation Template:IPAc-en has many rhymes including coyer and lawyer. In GA, the former pronunciation rhymes with the surname of singer Alison Moyet.</ref>
9. hundred(th)
10. husband
11. liquid
12. luggage <ref>It rhymes with the neologism druggage, which is a portmanteau derived from drug and luggage to refer to drugs illegally smuggled into airports, e.g. this article.</ref>
13. monster
14. nothing
15. olive <ref>If contractions are accepted, this rhymes with y'all've.</ref>
16. penguin
17. polka <ref>For some (GA) speakers, polka rhymes with mocha, coca, and Almond Roca</ref>
18. problem
19. sanction
20. sandwich
21. secret
22. something <ref>Though of course something rhymes with phrases such as this dumb thing.</ref>
23. zigzag

Words with obscure perfect rhymes

This list includes rhymes of words that have been listed as rhymeless.

Masculine rhymes

• airt (rhymes with the Scots pronunciations of various other words, e.g. "pairt",<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> a Scots variant of "part", and "smairt", a Scots variant of "smart"<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>)
• aitch Template:IPAc-en rhymes with dialectal nache (the bony point on the rump of an ox or cow), Rach, a hypocoristic for the name Rachel, one pronunciation of obsolete rache (a streak down a horse's face), and the surname of Anne Heche.
• angst Template:IPAc-en rhymes with manxed<ref>Lopped off in a way reminiscent of a Manx cat's taillessness: in Horse Nonsense by R. J. Yeatman.</ref> and wangst, self-indulgent self-pity (a portmanteau of wank and angst); phalanxed is not a perfect rhyme because the stress is on the wrong syllable. The alternative American pronunciation Template:IPAc-en has no rhymes.<ref>Exceptions for perfect rhymes with angst and angsts being some dialectical or theatrical (such as in performances of Shakespeare's plays) pronunciations of verbs conjugated in the somewhat obsolete second person plural form associated with the pronoun thou, which end with -est or -st. For example, thankest and wrongest, as in "thou thankest me too much" or "wrongst thou not me!", depending on how the words thankest Template:IPAc-en and wrongst Template:IPAc-en are pronounced, with the latter dependent on being subject to vowel-forward version of the cot–caught merger.</ref>
• beige Template:IPAc-en rhymes with greige, a colour between grey and beige.
• blitzed Template:IPAc-en rhymes with spritzed, from spritz, to squirt with water or mist, schizzed as in schizzed out, and one pronunciation of "midst".<ref name="mitst">Template:Cite web</ref>
• boing, -s Template:IPAc-en rhymes with doing (etymology 2), the sound made by an elastic object when struck by or striking a hard object, and toing/toings, the sound of a metallic vibration.
• bombed Template:IPAc-en rhymes with glommed, American slang for 'attached'.<ref>In General American, this also rhymes with calmed.</ref>
• borscht, borshcht Template:IPAc-en rhymes with dialectical warshed (washed)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>)
• cairn rhymes with bairn, a Northern English and Scottish word meaning child; and Nairn, a town and formal royal burgh in Scotland.
• cleansed Template:IPAc-en rhymes with lensed, "provided with a lens or lenses".
• coif Template:IPAc-en rhymes with boyf, slang for "boyfriend".
• culm Template:IPAc-en rhymes with stulm, another word for an adit.
• cusp Template:IPAc-en rhymes with [[Dual-specificity phosphatase|Template:Sc]], an acronym for "dual-specificity phosphatase enzyme".
• doth Template:IPAc-en rhymes with Cuth, a hypocoristic for the name Cuthbert, as in "Cuth's Day" at St. Cuthbert's Society.
• dreamt Template:IPAc-en rhymes with verklemmt, too overcome with emotion to speak. (Furthermore, if the rime is pronounced as Template:IPAc-en, it rhymes with exempt, tempt, etc.)
• else Template:IPAc-en rhymes with wels, the fish Silurus glanis; and Chels, a hypocoristic for the name Chelsea.
• eth Template:IPAc-en rhymes with Castilian Spanish merced, 'gift', which is occasionally used in English.Template:Citation needed
• fiends Template:IPAc-en rhymes with teinds, Scottish word for the portion of an estate assessed for the stipend of the clergy, and archaic Scottish piends.
• film, -s Template:IPAc-en rhymes with pilm, Scottish word for dust. The plural films rhymes with Wilms, a German surname and a kidney tumor
• flange Template:IPAc-en rhymes with Ange, a hypocoristic for the name Angela; and one pronunciation of ganj, short for ganja.
• fourths Template:IPAc-en rhymes with North's, belonging to someone named North (such as Oliver North or Kanye West and Kim Kardashian's daughter North West).
• fugue, -s Template:IPAc-en rhymes with jougs, which is rarely found in the singular; one pronunciation of Moog, the synthesizer brand name; Droog, the sister catalogue to Delia*s for boys; zhoug, a green Yemeni sauce; doogh, a savory Persian yogurt drink; cheug, a slang term for a person who has an outdated idea of what is trendy; the boog, short for the boogaloo movement; and Zoog Disney. The plural rhymes with the name of Zoogz Rift.
• grilse Template:IPAc-en rhymes with fils (etymology 2), a hundredth or thousandth of the monetary units of many Arab countries.
• gulf, -s Template:IPAc-en rhymes with [[SULF1|Template:Sc]] (pl. Sulfs), any of a number of sulfate-regulating enzymes.
• kiln, -s, if pronounced Template:IPAc-en, rhymes with the surname Milne. The plural rhymes with Milne's, belonging to someone with the surname Milne.
• loge Template:IPAc-en rhymes with the English pronunciation of Limoges, a city in France, and a kind of porcelain.
• midst Template:IPAc-en rhymes with didst, the archaic second-person singular for did (used with thou). The alternate pronunciation Template:IPAc-en<ref name="mitst" /> rhymes with blitzed and spritzed.
• month Template:IPAc-en rhymes with oneth, a mathematical term; also en-plus-oneth (n + 1)th and compounds like ninety-oneth (= ninety-first).<ref>Also attested in poetry is onety-oneth Template:IPAc-en</ref> This also appears in fractions and so takes the plural, as in twenty thirty-oneths.
• oblige Template:IPAc-en rhymes with Nige, a hypocoristic for the name Nigel.<ref>It also forms an identity rhyme with the African-American surname Blige, most notably borne by R&B singer Mary J. Blige.</ref>
• oink, -s Template:IPAc-en rhymes with yoink/yoinks, a colloquial interjection expressing the stealing or sudden acquisition of something; boink/boinks, a slang word meaning "to have sex with"; and Spoink, a Pokémon species introduced in Generation III.
• pint Template:IPAc-en rhymes with rynt, a word milkmaids use to get a cow to move.<ref>The plural has a common rhyme in the surname Heintz.</ref>
• plagued Template:IPAc-en rhymes with vagued, meaning "wandered/roamed" or "became vague/acted vaguely".
• plinth Template:IPAc-en rhymes with synth, colloquial for synthesizer.
• quaich Template:IPAc-en rhymes with scraich/scraigh, Scots for "to screech", and one pronunciation of abeigh, a rare Scottish word meaning "cautiously aloof".
• rouged Template:IPAc-en rhymes with luged, having ridden on a luge.
• sylph rhymes with MILF/milf, vulgar slang; and Wilf, a hypocorism for the name Wilfred.
• thesp Template:IPAc-en rhymes with hesp, a measure of two hanks of linen thread in Scotland; and Cresp, a French surname.
• torsk Template:IPAc-en rhymes with Norsk, a rural locality in Russia
• tufts rhymes with scufts, the third-person singular form of the dialectal verb scuft.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• waltzed Template:IPAc-en rhymes with schmaltzed, as in "schmaltzed up" (see schmaltz).
• wasp rhymes with knosp, "an ornament in the form of a bud or knob".
• wharves Template:IPAc-en rhymes with dwarves, the variant of dwarfs usually used in fantasy of the Tolkienian model. It also rhymes with corves, the plural of corf, a type of basket.
• width Template:IPAc-en rhymes with obsolete sidth, meaning length.
• yoicks Template:IPAc-en rhymes with oiks, the plural of oik, a slang term for a boorish member of the lower class in the U.K. and Ireland. It also forms an identity rhyme with joiks.

Feminine rhymes

• angsty Template:IPAc-en rhymes with planxty, an Irish or Welsh melody for the harp.
• arugula Template:IPAc-en rhymes with Bugula, a genus of bryozoan, in American English.
• chaos Template:IPAc-en rhymes with naos, the inner chamber of a temple.
• chimney Template:IPAc-en rhymes with Jimny, a model of car from Japanese automaker Suzuki.
• chocolate Template:IPAc-en rhymes with auklet, any of the smaller species of auks, in General American, in which the vowel in the accented syllable is pronounced /ɑ/ in both words.
• circle Template:IPAc-en rhymes with hurkle, to pull in all one's limbs; novercal, like a stepmother; squircle, a geometric shape resembling a square with rounded edges (e.g., Lamé's special quartic); opercle, an opercular bone; and the surnames of Angela Merkel (as pronounced in English), Studs Terkel, and Steve Urkel.<ref>It is also a homonym of cercal.</ref>
• circus Template:IPAc-en rhymes with murcous, having cut off one's thumb; and Quercus, a genus of oak.
• diamond Template:IPAc-en rhymes with hymened, having a hymen of a specified description, as in the word tough-hymened.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• elbow Template:IPAc-en rhymes with the surname of Vivian Selbo.
• music Template:IPAc-en rhymes with anchusic, as in anchusic acid; dysgeusic, having a disorder that causes alterations in one's sense of taste; ageusic, lacking a sense of taste; and sheltopusik, a lizard of Europe and Central Asia.
• neutron Template:IPAc-en, in American English, rhymes with Lutron, an electronics company based in Coopersburg, Pennsylvania.
• ninja, -s Template:IPAc-en rhymes with Rohingya, a minority group in Myanmar, and Shinja, a Christian who practices martial arts Template:Cn (in rhotic accents such as General American; in non-rhotic accents such as RP, these words also rhyme with ginger, injure, etc.).
• opus (with a short 0), Template:IPAc-en, rhymes with Hoppus, a method of measuring timber and surname of Mark Hoppus, lead singer of Blink-182; and, in American English, one pronunciation of tapas, Mexican finger food.<ref>With the American pronunciation Template:IPAc-en with a long o, opus rhymes with other words, such as Canopus, lagopous, monopus (one-eyed), and slang mopus. If the /ᵻ/ in coppice is considered interchangeable with a schwa, then this word also rhymes with the British pronunciation.</ref>
• orange Template:IPAc-en, rhymes with "door hinge" in certain accents; Blorenge, a hill in Wales; and "blorange", slang for a hair color between blond and orange. Webster's Third gives two pronunciations for sporange, one of which rhymes. However, one is a spelling pronunciation based on orange, and the OED only has the non-rhyming pronunciation, with the stress on the ange : Template:IPAc-en. The American pronunciation of orange with one syllable has no rhyme, even in non-rhotic accents.<ref>Held, Carl. "Breaking the Orange Rhyme Barrier". Games. Issue 167 (Vol. 25, No. 1). pp. 10–13. February 2001.</ref>
• plankton Template:IPAc-en rhymes with Yankton, a member of a western branch of the Dakota people and several American place names named after the people.
• poem Template:IPAc-en, in American English, rhymes with the Hebrew names Noam, Jeroboam and Rehoboam; no'm, a dialectal contraction for "no, ma'am"; or with phloem (/ˈfləʊ.əm/) (pronunciations vary).<ref>When it is pronounced Template:IPAc-en, it rhymes with "home", "comb", "Rome", etc.</ref>
• poet Template:IPAc-en rhymes with coit, to have sex.
• purple Template:IPAc-en rhymes with curple, the hindquarters of a horse or donkey, hirple, to walk with a limp,<ref>Held, Carl. "Orange, Silver, now Purple (More Lexical Lunacy)". Games. Issue 207 (Vol. 29, No. 1). pp. 4–9, 16. February 2005.</ref> nurple, the act of roughly twisting a nipple (slang).
• rhythm Template:IPAc-en rhymes with Lytham, a seaside town in England; and smitham, fine malt or ore dust.<ref>Rhythmic has no rhymes apart from logarithmic and algorithmic, which are often excluded for having identical syllables.</ref>
• silver Template:IPAc-en rhymes with chilver, a female lamb.<ref>Held, Carl. "From Orange to Silver (More Lexical Lunacy)". Games. Issue 200 (Vol. 28, No. 4). pp. 4–9, 16. May 2004.</ref>
• siren Template:IPAc-en rhymes with gyron, a type of triangle in heraldry; environ, meaning to encircle or surround; the given names Byron and Myron; and apeiron, meaning infinity.
• soldier Template:IPAc-en rhymes with the surnames Bolger and Folger
• toilet Template:IPAc-en rhymes with oillet, an eyelet.
• woman Template:IPAc-en rhymes with toman (some pronunciations), a Persian coin and military division.<ref>The plural women rhymes with the more common persimmon and the surname of Jamie McCrimmon in some American pronunciations.</ref>
• yttrium Template:IPAc-en rhymes with liberum arbitrium, a legal term.

See also

• List of closed pairs of English rhyming words

External links

• Slant rhymes for words without perfect rhymes