Feminine rhyme

• In prosody, i.e., the study of poetic metre, a feminine rhyme is a rhyme between two words or phrases in which one or more unstressed syllables follow a stressed syllable - 'number' and 'slumber', 'tearfully' and 'fearfully', 'offend her' and 'defend her', 'treasures' and 'pleasures' are all feminine rhymes. (Incidentally, a line of verse is said to have a feminine ending when it ends with an unstressed syllable.)

In the following verse from a poem by Alexander Pope (1688-1744) On a certain Lady at Court all the lines have feminine endings, and lines 1 and 3, and lines 2 and 4 have feminine rhymes:

Not warp'd by passion, awed by rumour;

Not grave through pride, nor gay through folly;

An equal mixture of good-humour

And sensible soft melancholy.

Byron (1788-1824) is a great master of the feminine rhyme used for flippant throwaway humour, for example

But O ye lords of ladies intellectual,

Inform us truly, have they not henpecked you all?

(Don Juan, canto 1, stanza 22)

• By contrast we have a masculine rhyme when the rhyme is between final stressed syllables only. So it may be a rhyme between two stressed monosyllabic words - for example, 'hair' and 'fair' or 'bell' and 'fell' - or between the final stressed syllables of two polysyllabic words - for example, 'sustain' and 'detain' or 'infect' and 'affect' - or between a stressed monosyllabic word and the final stressed syllable of a polysyllabic word - for example, 'well' and 'impel' or 'share' and affair'. (Incidentally, a line of verse is said to have a masculine ending when it ends with a stressed syllable.)

In the following verse from a poem by William Cory (1823-1892) Heraclitus all the lines have masculine endings, and lines 1 and 2, and lines 3 and 4 have masculine rhymes:

They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,

They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.

I wept as I remember'd how often you and I

Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.

In English poetry masculine rhymes are much more common than feminine rhymes, but in the poetry of some other languages (e.g., Italian) feminine rhymes are more common.