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Assonance
 
 
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Assonance is repetition of vowel sounds
Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis....
 to create internal rhyming
Rhyme

A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds in two or more different words and is most often used in poetry and songs. The word "rhyme" may also refer to a short poem, such as a rhyming couplet or other brief rhyming poem such as nursery rhymes....
 within phrase
Phrase

In grammar, a phrase is a group of words that functions as a single unit in the syntax of a Sentence .For example the house at the end of the street is a phrase....
s or sentences
Sentences

The Four Books of Sentences is a book of theology written by Peter Lombard in the twelfth century. It is a systematic compilation of theology, written around 1150; it derives its name from the 'sententia' or opinions on Biblical passages that it gathered together....
, and together with alliteration
Alliteration

Alliteration is the repeated occurrence of a consonant sound at the beginning of several words in the same phrase. Consonance is the repetition of the same consonant sound anywhere in a string of words, not just the initial sound as is in alliteration....
 and consonance serves as one of the building blocks of verse
Poetry

Poetry is a form of literature art in which language is used for its aesthetics and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning ....
. For example, in the phrase "Do you like blue?", the "oo" (ou/ue) sound is repeated within the sentence and is assonant.

Assonance is more a feature of verse
Meter (poetry)

In poetry, the meter is the basic rhythm of a verse . Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse meter, or a certain set of meters alternating in a particular order....
 than prose
Prose

Prose is writing that resembles everyday Speech communication. The word "prose" is derived from the Latin prosa, which literally translates to "straightforward"....
. It is used in (mainly modern) English-language
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
 poetry, and is particularly important in Old French
Old French

Old French was the Romance languages dialect continuum spoken in territories which span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from around 1000 to 1300....
, Spanish
Spanish language

Spanish or Castilian is a Romance languages that originated in northern Spain, and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile and evolved into the principal language of government and trade....
 and Celtic languages
Celtic languages

The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic", a branch of the greater Indo-European languages language family. The term "Celtic" was used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, having much earlier been used by Greek and Roman writers to describe tribes in central Gaul....
.

The eponym
Eponym

An eponym is a person, whether real or fictitious, after whom a particular toponym, ethnonym, regnal year, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named....
ous student of Willy Russell's
Willy Russell

William Russell is a British dramatist, lyricist, and composer. His best-known works are Educating Rita, Shirley Valentine, and Blood Brothers ....
 Educating Rita
Educating Rita

Educating Rita is a stage comedy by British playwright Willy Russell. It is a play for two actors set entirely in the office of an Open University lecturer....
 described it as "getting the rhyme wrong".



Assonance can also be used in forming proverb
Proverb

A proverb , also called a byword or nayword, is a simple and concrete saying popularly known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity....
s, often a form of short poetry.






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Assonance is repetition of vowel sounds
Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis....
 to create internal rhyming
Rhyme

A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds in two or more different words and is most often used in poetry and songs. The word "rhyme" may also refer to a short poem, such as a rhyming couplet or other brief rhyming poem such as nursery rhymes....
 within phrase
Phrase

In grammar, a phrase is a group of words that functions as a single unit in the syntax of a Sentence .For example the house at the end of the street is a phrase....
s or sentences
Sentences

The Four Books of Sentences is a book of theology written by Peter Lombard in the twelfth century. It is a systematic compilation of theology, written around 1150; it derives its name from the 'sententia' or opinions on Biblical passages that it gathered together....
, and together with alliteration
Alliteration

Alliteration is the repeated occurrence of a consonant sound at the beginning of several words in the same phrase. Consonance is the repetition of the same consonant sound anywhere in a string of words, not just the initial sound as is in alliteration....
 and consonance serves as one of the building blocks of verse
Poetry

Poetry is a form of literature art in which language is used for its aesthetics and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning ....
. For example, in the phrase "Do you like blue?", the "oo" (ou/ue) sound is repeated within the sentence and is assonant.

Assonance is more a feature of verse
Meter (poetry)

In poetry, the meter is the basic rhythm of a verse . Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse meter, or a certain set of meters alternating in a particular order....
 than prose
Prose

Prose is writing that resembles everyday Speech communication. The word "prose" is derived from the Latin prosa, which literally translates to "straightforward"....
. It is used in (mainly modern) English-language
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
 poetry, and is particularly important in Old French
Old French

Old French was the Romance languages dialect continuum spoken in territories which span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from around 1000 to 1300....
, Spanish
Spanish language

Spanish or Castilian is a Romance languages that originated in northern Spain, and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile and evolved into the principal language of government and trade....
 and Celtic languages
Celtic languages

The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic", a branch of the greater Indo-European languages language family. The term "Celtic" was used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, having much earlier been used by Greek and Roman writers to describe tribes in central Gaul....
.

The eponym
Eponym

An eponym is a person, whether real or fictitious, after whom a particular toponym, ethnonym, regnal year, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named....
ous student of Willy Russell's
Willy Russell

William Russell is a British dramatist, lyricist, and composer. His best-known works are Educating Rita, Shirley Valentine, and Blood Brothers ....
 Educating Rita
Educating Rita

Educating Rita is a stage comedy by British playwright Willy Russell. It is a play for two actors set entirely in the office of an Open University lecturer....
 described it as "getting the rhyme wrong".

  • Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. - William Wordsworth, "The world is too much with us
    The world is too much with us

    "The world Is Too Much With Us" is a sonnet by the England Romanticism poet William Wordsworth. In it, Wordsworth criticizes the modern world for being absorbed in materialism and distancing itself from nature....
    "
  • Hear the mellow wedding bells. — Edgar Allan Poe
    Edgar Allan Poe

    Edgar Allan Poe was an American poet, Short story writer, Editing and Literary criticism, and is considered part of the American Romanticism. Best known for his tales of Mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the Detective fiction genre....
    , "The Bells
    The Bells

    "The Bells" is a heavily Onomatopoeia poem by Edgar Allan Poe which was not published until after his Death of Edgar Allan Poe in 1849. It is perhaps best known for the diacope repetition of the word "bells." The poem has four parts to it; each part becomes darker and darker as the poem progresses from "the jingling and the tinkling" of the b...
    "
  • Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness - John Keats
    John Keats

    John Keats was an England poetry who became one of the principal poets of the English Romanticism movement during the early nineteenth century....
    , "Ode to Autumn"
  • And murmuring of innumerable bees - Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Princess VII.203
  • The crumbling thunder of seas — Robert Louis Stevenson
    Robert Louis Stevenson

    Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson , was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and Travel writing. Stevenson was greatly admired by many authors, including Jorge Luis Borges, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Vladimir Nabokov, J....
  • That solitude which suits abstruser musings - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
    Samuel Taylor Coleridge

    Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an England poet, critic and Philosophy who was, along with his friend William Wordsworth, one of the founders of the Romanticism in England and one of the Lake Poets....
  • The scurrying furred small friars squeal in the dowse - Dylan Thomas
    Dylan Thomas

    Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh people poet who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself....
  • Dead in the middle of little Italy, little did we know that we riddled two middle men who didn't do diddily." - Big Pun
    Big Pun

    Christopher Rios , better known as Big Punisher or Big Pun, was a Puerto Ricans in the United States-United States rapping who emerged from the underground rap scene in The Bronx in the late 1990s....
  • It's hot and it's monotonous. - Stephen Sondheim
    Stephen Sondheim

    Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for theatre and film, winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards and the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, and a Pulitzer Prize....
    , Sunday in the Park with George
    Sunday in the Park with George

    Sunday in the Park with George is a Musical theatre with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine. The musical was inspired by the painting "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" by Georges-Pierre Seurat....
    , It's Hot Up Here
  • tundi tur unda - Catullus
    Catullus

    Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Roman poet of the 1st century BC. His work remains widely studied, and continues to influence poetry and other forms of art....
     11
  • With the sound, with the sound, with the sound of the ground. - David Bowie
    David Bowie

    David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and Arrangement. Active in five decades of rock music and frequently reinventing his music and image, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s....
    , "Law (Earthlings on Fire)
    Earthling (album)

    Earthling is a 1997 album by David Bowie. The album showcases an electronica-influenced sound partly inspired by the rave culture of the 1990s....
    "
  • on a proud round cloud in a white high night - e.e. cummings, if a Cheer Rules Elephant Angel Child Should Sit
  • I never seen so many Dominican women with cinnamon tans - Will Smith
    Will Smith

    Willard Christopher "Will" Smith, Jr. is an United Statesn actor, film producer and rapping. He has enjoyed success in music, television and film....
    ,     Miami
  • So the FCC won't let me be or let me be me so let me see, they try to shut me down on MTV but it feel so empty without me- Eminem
    Eminem

    Marshall Bruce Mathers III , known by his primary stage name Eminem, or by his alter-ego Slim Shady, is an American rapper, record producer and actor....
    , Without Me


Assonance can also be used in forming proverb
Proverb

A proverb , also called a byword or nayword, is a simple and concrete saying popularly known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity....
s, often a form of short poetry. In the Oromo language
Oromo language

Oromo, also known as Afaan borana Oromoo, Oromiffa , and sometimes in other languages by variant spellings of these names , is an Afro-Asiatic languages language, and the most widely spoken of the Cushitic languages family....
 of Ethiopia, note the use of a single vowel throughout the following proverb, an extreme form of assonance:
  • kan mana baala, a?laa gaala (“A leaf at home, but a camel elsewhere"; somebody who has a big reputation among those who do not know him well.)


In more modern verse, stressed assonance has become the main literary device in modern rap, starting with gangsta rap like 2Pac in the 1990s, departing from rap's foundations in the 80's rapper like Slick Rick when rhyme at the end of each line was the cornerstone of poetic expression. An example is Public Enemy's 'Don't Believe The Hype': "Their pens and pads I snatch 'cause I've had it / I'm not an addict, fiending for static / I see their tape recorder and I grab it / No, you can't have it back, silly rabbit".

See also

  • Alliteration
    Alliteration

    Alliteration is the repeated occurrence of a consonant sound at the beginning of several words in the same phrase. Consonance is the repetition of the same consonant sound anywhere in a string of words, not just the initial sound as is in alliteration....
  • Consonance


Sources

  • , American Rhetoric: Rhetorical Figures in Sound
  • , Modern & Contemporary American Poetry, University of Pennsylvania
  • , Elements of Poetry, VirtuaLit