What makes a sound rhyme?

Most people think rhyme is about the letters at the end of a word. It isn’t. Rhyme is about vowel assonance — the shape your mouth makes when the syllable lands. Consonants are a garnish.

That’s why rhyme can rhyme with time and divine: the vowel matches. The letters don’t have to.

The vowel does the work

English has roughly 14 vowel sounds. Not five — the alphabet lies to you about that. cat, bed, sit, cot, cut — all different. Each one is a separate landing zone for the mouth.

If your two words land in the same zone, they rhyme. If they don’t, they don’t — no matter what they look like on the page.

Consonants color the vowel

R, L, and the nasals (M, N, NG) stain the vowel they touch. car isn’t AH plus R, it’s a new color entirely. Once you hear that, “war” and “more” stop being mysterious and start being obvious.

If two words share a color, they rhyme. If they don’t, you know exactly why — and exactly what to look for.

This is the whole insight behind wurds.org. Color is how the ear sees. The page just catches up.