Assonance

Assonance

Assonance is repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within phrases or sentences, and together with alliteration and consonance serves as one of the building blocks of verse. 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 than prose. It is used in (mainly modern) English-language poetry, and is particularly important in Old French, Spanish and Celtic languages.

The eponymous student of Willy Russell's "Educating Rita" described it as "getting the rhyme wrong".

*Hear the mellow wedding bells. — Edgar Allan Poe, "The Bells"
*And murmuring of innumerable bees - Alfred Lord Tennyson, "The Princess" VII.203
*The crumbling thunder of seas — Robert Louis Stevenson
*That solitude which suits abstruser musings - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
*The scurrying furred small friars squeal in the dowse - Dylan Thomas
*Dead in the middle of little Italy, little did we know that we riddled two middle men who didn't do diddily." - Big Pun
*It's hot and it's monotonous. - Stephen Sondheim, Sunday in the Park with George, "It's Hot Up Here"
*tunditur unda - Catullus 11
*With the sound, with the sound, with the sound of the ground. - David Bowie, "Law (Earthlings on Fire)"
*on a proud round cloud in a white high night - e.e. cummings, "if a cheerrulest Elephantangelchild should sit

Assonance can also be used in forming proverbs, often a form of short poetry. In the Oromo language of Ethiopia, note the use of a single vowel throughout the following proverb, an extreme form of assonance:
*"kan mana baala, aʔlaa 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 rapFact|date=June 2008, starting with gangsta rap like 2Pac in the 1990sFact|date=June 2008, departing from rap's foundations in the 80's rapper like Slick RickFact|date=June 2008 when rhyme at the end of each line was the cornerstone of poetic expressionFact|date=June 2008. An example is Public Enemy's 'Don't Believe The Hype': "Their pens and pads I stash '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 / I'm going to my media assassin / Harry Allen, I've got to ask him / Yo Harry, you're a writer, are we that type? / 'Don't believe the hype'"."

See also

*Alliteration

*Consonance


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  • assonance — [ asɔnɑ̃s ] n. f. • 1690; du lat. adsonare « répondre par un son (écho) », de sonus « son » ♦ Répétition du même son, spécialt de la voyelle accentuée à la fin de chaque vers (belle et rêve). Assonance et rime (⇒aussi allitération) . « des… …   Encyclopédie Universelle

  • assonancé — assonance [ asɔnɑ̃s ] n. f. • 1690; du lat. adsonare « répondre par un son (écho) », de sonus « son » ♦ Répétition du même son, spécialt de la voyelle accentuée à la fin de chaque vers (belle et rêve). Assonance et rime (⇒aussi …   Encyclopédie Universelle

  • Assonance — As so*nance, n. [Cf. F. assonance. See {Assonant}.] 1. Resemblance of sound. The disagreeable assonance of sheath and sheathed. Steevens. [1913 Webster] 2. (Pros.) A peculiar species of rhyme, in which the last accented vowel and those which… …   The Collaborative International Dictionary of English

  • assonance — (n.) 1727, resemblance of sounds between words, from Fr. assonance, from assonant, from L. assonantem (nom. assonans), prp. of assonare to resound, respond to, from ad to (see AD (Cf. ad )) + sonare to sound (see SOUND (Cf …   Etymology dictionary

  • assonance — index accordance (understanding), consensus Burton s Legal Thesaurus. William C. Burton. 2006 …   Law dictionary

  • assonance — ASSONANCE. s. f. Ressemblance imparfaite de son dans la terminaison des mots. Dans la prose, il ne suffit pas d éviter les rimes à la fin des membres des périodes, il faut éviter les assonances. Or et aurore, peur et heure sont des assonances …   Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française 1798

  • assonance — ► NOUN ▪ resemblance of sound between words arising from the rhyming of vowels only (e.g. sonnet, porridge) or from use of identical consonants with different vowels (e.g. cold, culled). DERIVATIVES assonant adjective. ORIGIN from Latin assonare… …   English terms dictionary

  • assonance — [as′ə nəns] n. [Fr < L assonans, prp. of assonare, to sound in answer < ad , to + sonare, SOUND1, v.] 1. likeness of sound, as in a series of words or syllables 2. Prosody repetition of a vowel sound in stressed syllables in which the… …   English World dictionary

  • Assonance — L assonance (substantif féminin), de l espagnol asonancia, asonar (verbe) vient du latin adsonare (« répondre à un son par un autre son ») est une figure de style qui consiste en la répétition d un même son vocalique (phonème) dans… …   Wikipédia en Français

  • assonance — assonant, adj., n. assonantal /as euh nan tl/, assonantic, adj. /as euh neuhns/, n. 1. resemblance of sounds. 2. Also called vowel rhyme. Pros. rhyme in which the same vowel sounds are used with different consonants in the stressed syllables of… …   Universalium

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