Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Resemblance of sound, especially of the vowel sounds in words, as in.
- noun The repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds, especially in stressed syllables, with changes in the intervening consonants, as in the phrase tilting at windmills.
- noun Rough similarity; approximate agreement.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Resemblance of sounds.
- noun Specifically In prosody, a species of imperfect rime, or rather a substitute for rime, especially common in Spanish poetry, consisting in using the same vowel-sound with different consonants, and requiring the use of the same vowels in the assonant words from the last accented vowel to the end of the word: thus, man and hat, penitent and reticence, are examples of assonance in English.
- noun Agreement or harmony of things.
- noun Synonyms Paronomasia, etc. See
pun .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun Resemblance of sound.
- noun (Pros.) A peculiar species of rhyme, in which the last accented vowel and those which follow it in one word correspond in sound with the vowels of another word, while the consonants of the two words are unlike in sound.
- noun Incomplete correspondence.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun prosody The
repetition of similar or identicalvowel sounds (though with differentconsonants ), usually inliterature orpoetry .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the repetition of similar vowels in the stressed syllables of successive words
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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When the initial letters are vowels, the gimmick is called assonance.
The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time William Safire 2004
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When the initial letters are vowels, the gimmick is called assonance.
The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time William Safire 2004
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On "Irish Bulls" [VERBATIM II, 1, 1] and the German bull, by an odd coincidence of assonance, the German word for this linguistic extravagance is Verbalhornen.
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The repetition of the same stressed vowel sounds with different consonants is called assonance: en Español
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There is always an element of subjectivity in a judgement about alliteration as indeed also about other effects, such as assonance and rhyme.
On alliterating, or not DC 2007
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There is always an element of subjectivity in a judgement about alliteration as indeed also about other effects, such as assonance and rhyme.
Archive 2007-03-01 DC 2007
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But the two verbs nuach and nacham have a kind of assonance, they sound somewhat alike, and Lamech played upon this similarity in a perfectly permissible pun.
Exposition of Genesis: Volume 1 1892-1972 1942
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Assonance, in its stricter sense, means the repetition of an accented vowel (blackness -- dances), while the succeeding sounds vary, but the terms "assonance" and "consonance" are often employed loosely to signify harmonious effects of tone-color within a line or group of lines.
A Study of Poetry Bliss Perry 1907
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The kind of assonance avoided was identity of final sounded consonants in successive words, _e. g._, lane, vine.
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He explains terms such as assonance and consonance through the lyrics of Keats and Eminem ...
GotPoetry.com News 2009
plethora commented on the word assonance
I strongly dislike this word. Not because of the meaning, and not because I'm sick of year 12 English (although I am that, too), but because its mouthfeel is just so unpleasant.
October 23, 2008
mollusque commented on the word assonance
I agree. Assonance is dissonant.
October 23, 2008