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.OED search for pronunciations ending in "*QbjUleIt". 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 , 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.In RP, stressed of currently has the rhymes sov, short for sovereign, and Sov, short for Soviet. 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
The majority of words with antepenultimate stress, such as ambulance,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. 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.In the August 1980 Kickshaws, Howard Bergerson listed 55, but rhymes have been found for some of them.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). 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.Though Cole reported a phrasal rhyme in "Elijah knew, oblige a Jew".
adzed alb /-ælb/ (rhymes with some pronunciations of the proper noun "Kalb" in the name of Johann de Kalb) amongst /-ʌŋst/ ("quincunxed" qualifies apart from the final syllable being unstressed) angsts The alternative American pronunciation has no rhymes even in the singular. bilge boinged breadth, -s bronzed bulb, -s, -ed Bulb can be assumed to rhyme with culb, an obsolete word (and hapax legomenon) for a glass distillation vessel attested without pronunciation from 1683. calced (may rhyme with "valsed" in British English, according to the Oxford English Dictionary) combs (combinations) coolth corpsed delft depth, -s dumbth eighth, -s excerpts (verb) false With the cot-caught merger, this rhymes with Hals, a neighborhood in Passau, Germany. fifth, -ed, -s (has rhymes for those who drop the f or th) filmed The plural films rhymes with Wilms, a German surname, and a kidney tumor. glimpsed goonch gouge(d) (en)gulfed kilned (but not when pronounced as ) kirsch midsts mulcts The infinitive mulct rhymes with sulked, bulked, etc. ninth, -s obliged obvs oomph prompts or scarce sculpts sixth, -s sowthed, southed As . 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 , though close, have the wrong stress to be perfect rhymes. Sowths, souths rhyme with mouth's. (Southed but not sowthed is also pronounced , which rhymes with mouthed.) spoilt stilb sudsed swoln timesed traipsed twelfth, -s The "f" in "twelfth" is commonly elided in casual speech, causing "twelfth" to rhyme with "health" and "wealth". unbeknownst vuln, -ed, -s warmth whilst with (the word is also pronounced with , in which case it has rhymes like "pith") wolf, -ed, -s wolve, -d, -s worlds wounds
pork and forge have no rhymes in conservative RP. 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 (), while forge now rhymes with gorge. The OED no longer lists as an alternative pronunciation in its third edition.
Nonce words ending in -ed ('provided with') may produce other potentially refractory masculine rhymes.Some promising words are befezzed (wearing a fez) and bemusicked, though the first rhymes with Yezd. There are additional words which are only partially assimilated into English, such as Russian kovsh , which are refractory rhymes.
The contraction daren't 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 . heighth, -s Colloquial GA heighth is . In RP, highth rhymes with dryth (= drought), rithe, etc., but is obsolete. iron Two syllables, , for many speakers. In RP, this rhymes with lion, cyan, Zion, etc. karsts In RP, this rhymes with fasts.
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. The following words are representative, but there are thousands of others.
angel angryThis has a derived rhyme in hangry, and also rhymes with the first part of Shangri-la. anxious comment emptyIn 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". engineIf apostrophic rhymes are accepted, this could be said to rhyme with "avengin'". In the pin-pen merger, engine would rhyme with "syringin." foible foyerBritish pronunciation or only. The US pronunciation has many rhymes including coyer and lawyer. In GA, the former pronunciation rhymes with the surname of singer Alison Moyet. hundred(th) husband liquid luggageIt 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. monster nothing oliveIf contractions are accepted, this rhymes with y'all've for speakers with the cot-caught merger. penguin polkaFor some (GA) speakers, polka rhymes with mocha, coca, and Almond Roca. It may also rhyme with an English pronunciation of the Polish surname Rolka. problem sanction sandwich secret somethingThough of course something rhymes with phrases such as this dumb thing. 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", a Scots variant of "part", and "smairt", a Scots variant of "smart") aitch 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 rhymes with manxedLopped off in a way reminiscent of a Manx cat's taillessness: in Horse Nonsense by R. J. Yeatman. 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 has no rhymes.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 and wrongst are pronounced, with the latter dependent on being subject to vowel-forward version of the cot–caught merger. beige rhymes with greige, a colour between grey and beige (though etymologically unrelated to them) and one pronunciation of manège, the art of training horses. blitzed rhymes with spritzed, from spritz, to squirt with water or mist, schizzed as in schizzed out, and one pronunciation of "midst". boing, -s 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 rhymes with glommed, American slang for 'attached'.In General American, this also rhymes with calmed. borscht, borshcht rhymes with dialectical warshed (washed)) cairn rhymes with bairn, a Northern English and Scottish word meaning child; and Nairn, a town and formal royal burgh in Scotland. cleansed rhymes with lensed, "provided with a lens or lenses". coif rhymes with boyf, slang for "boyfriend". culm rhymes with stulm, another word for an adit. cusp rhymes with , an acronym for "dual-specificity phosphatase enzyme". doth rhymes with Cuth, a hypocoristic for the name Cuthbert, as in "Cuth's Day" at St. Cuthbert's Society. dreamt rhymes with verklemmt, too overcome with emotion to speak. (Furthermore, if the rime is pronounced as , it rhymes with exempt, tempt, etc.) else rhymes with wels, the fish Silurus glanis; and Chels, a hypocoristic for the name Chelsea. eth rhymes with Castilian Spanish merced, 'gift', which is occasionally used in English. fiends rhymes with teinds, Scottish word for the portion of an estate assessed for the stipend of the clergy, and archaic Scottish piends.