List of English words without rhymes


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, and may not work for other accents or dialects. Multiple-word rhymes, self-rhymes, imperfect rhymes, and identical rhymes 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. 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 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, citizen, dangerous and obvious, are non-rhyming. Also, most words with preantepenultimate stress, such as 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. 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.
  1. adzed
  2. alb /-ælb/
  3. amongst /-ʌŋst/
  4. angsts
  5. bilge
  6. boinged
  7. breadth, -s
  8. bronzed
  9. bulb, -s, -ed
  10. calced
  11. combs
  12. coolth
  13. corpsed
  14. delft
  15. depth, -s
  16. dumbth
  17. eighth, -s
  18. excerpts
  19. false
  20. fifth, -ed, -s
  21. filmed
  22. glimpsed
  23. goonch
  24. gouge(d)
  25. (en)gulfed
  26. kilned
  27. kirsch
  28. midsts
  29. mulcts
  30. ninth, -s
  31. obliged
  32. obvs
  33. oomph
  34. pierced
  35. prompts or
  36. scarce
  37. sculpts
  38. sixth, -s
  39. sowthed, southed
  40. spoilt
  41. stilb
  42. sudsed
  43. swoln
  44. traipsed
  45. twelfth, -s The "f" in "twelfth" is commonly elided in casual speech, causing "twelfth" to rhyme with "health" and "wealth".
  46. unbeknownst
  47. vuln, -ed, -s
  48. warmth
  49. whilst
  50. with
  51. wolf, -ed, -s
  52. wolve, -d, -s
  53. worlds
  54. 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 may produce other potentially refractory masculine rhymes. 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.
  1. heighth, -s
  2. iron
  3. ''karsts''

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.
  1. angel
  2. angry
  3. anxious
  4. comment
  5. empty
  6. engine
  7. foible
  8. foyer
  9. hundred(th)
  10. husband
  11. liquid
  12. luggage
  13. monster
  14. nothing
  15. olive
  16. penguin
  17. polka
  18. problem
  19. sanction
  20. sandwich
  21. secret
  22. something
  23. ''zigzag''

Words with obscure perfect rhymes

This list includes rhymes of words that have been listed as rhymeless.

Masculine rhymes

airt aitch rhymes with dialectal nache, Rach, a hypocoristic for the name Rachel, one pronunciation of obsolete rache, and the surname of Anne Heche.angst rhymes with manxed and wangst, self-indulgent self-pity ; phalanxed is not a perfect rhyme because the stress is on the wrong syllable. The alternative American pronunciation has no rhymes.beige rhymes with greige, a colour between grey and beige.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, 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'.borscht, borshcht rhymes with dialectical warshed )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 [Dual-specificity phosphatase|], 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. 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.film, -s rhymes with pilm, Scottish word for dust. The plural films rhymes with Wilms, a German surname and a kidney tumorflange rhymes with Ange, a hypocoristic for the name Angela; and one pronunciation of ganj, short for ganja.fourths rhymes with North's, belonging to someone named North.fugue, -s rhymes with jougs, which is rarely found in the singular; one pronunciation of Moog, the synthesizer brand name; Droog, the sister catalogue to Delia*s for boys; zhoug, a green Yemeni sauce; doogh, a savory Persian yogurt drink; cheug, a slang term for a person who has an outdated idea of what is trendy; the boog, short for the boogaloo movement; and Zoog Disney. The plural rhymes with the name of Zoogz Rift.grilse rhymes with fils, a hundredth or thousandth of the monetary units of many Arab countries.gulf, -s rhymes with [SULF1|], any of a number of sulfate-regulating enzymes.kiln, -s, if pronounced, rhymes with the surname Milne. The plural rhymes with Milne's, belonging to someone with the surname Milne.loge rhymes with the English pronunciation of Limoges, a city in France, and a kind of porcelain. It also rhymes with a common pronunciation of doge, especially when referring to the Internet meme.midst rhymes with didst, the archaic second-person singular for did. The alternate pronunciation rhymes with blitzed and spritzed.month rhymes with oneth, a mathematical term; also en-plus-oneth th and compounds like ninety-oneth. This also appears in fractions and so takes the plural, as in twenty thirty-oneths.oblige rhymes with Nige, a hypocoristic for the name Nigel.oink, -s rhymes with yoink/yoinks, a colloquial interjection expressing the stealing or sudden acquisition of something; boink/boinks, a slang word meaning "to have sex with"; and Spoink, a Pokémon species introduced in Generation III.pint rhymes with rynt, a word milkmaids use to get a cow to move.plagued rhymes with vagued, meaning "wandered/roamed" or "became vague/acted vaguely".plinth rhymes with synth, colloquial for synthesizer.quaich rhymes with scraich/scraigh, Scots for "to screech", and one pronunciation of abeigh, a rare Scottish word meaning "cautiously aloof". rouged rhymes with luged, having ridden on a luge.sylph rhymes with MILF/milf, vulgar slang; and Wilf, a hypocorism for the name Wilfred.thesp rhymes with hesp, a measure of two hanks of linen thread in Scotland; and Cresp, a French surname.torsk rhymes with Norsk, a rural locality in Russiatufts rhymes with scufts, the third-person singular form of the dialectal verb scuft.waltzed rhymes with schmaltzed, as in "schmaltzed up".wasp rhymes with knosp, "an ornament in the form of a bud or knob".wharves rhymes with dwarves, the variant of dwarfs usually used in fantasy of the Tolkienian model. It also rhymes with corves, the plural of corf, a type of basket.whorl rhymes with schorl, a variety of tourmaline.width rhymes with obsolete sidth, meaning length.yoicks rhymes with oiks, the plural of oik, a slang term for a boorish member of the lower class in the U.K. and Ireland. It also forms an identity rhyme with joiks''.

Feminine rhymes

angsty rhymes with planxty, an Irish or Welsh melody for the harp.arugula rhymes with Bugula, a genus of bryozoan, in American English.chaos rhymes with naos, the inner chamber of a temple.chimney rhymes with Jimny, a model of car from Japanese automaker Suzuki.chocolate rhymes with auklet, any of the smaller species of auks, in General American, in which the vowel in the accented syllable is pronounced /ɑ/ in both words.circle rhymes with hurkle, to pull in all one's limbs; novercal, like a stepmother; squircle, a geometric shape resembling a square with rounded edges ; opercle, an opercular bone; and the surnames of Angela Merkel, Studs Terkel, and Steve Urkel.circus rhymes with murcous, having cut off one's thumb; and Quercus, a genus of oak.diamond rhymes with hymened, having a hymen of a specified description, as in the word tough-hymened.elbow rhymes with the surname of Vivian Selbo.music rhymes with anchusic, as in anchusic acid; dysgeusic, having a disorder that causes alterations in one's sense of taste; ageusic, lacking a sense of taste; and sheltopusik, a lizard of Europe and Central Asia.neutron, in American English, rhymes with Lutron, an electronics company based in Coopersburg, Pennsylvania.ninja, -s rhymes with Rohingya, a minority group in Myanmar, and Shinja, a Christian who practices martial arts .opus '',, rhymes with Hoppus, a method of measuring timber and surname of Mark Hoppus, lead singer of Blink-182; and, in American English, one pronunciation of tapas, Mexican finger food.orange, rhymes with "door hinge" in certain accents; Blorenge, a hill in Wales; and "blorange", slang for a hair color between blond and orange. Webster's Third gives two pronunciations for sporange, one of which rhymes. However, one is a spelling pronunciation based on orange, and the OED only has the non-rhyming pronunciation, with the stress on the ange :. The American pronunciation of orange with one syllable has no rhyme, even in non-rhotic accents.plankton rhymes with Yankton, a member of a western branch of the Dakota people and several American place names named after the people.poem, in American English, rhymes with the Hebrew names Noam, Jeroboam and Rehoboam; no'm, a dialectal contraction for "no, ma'am"; or with phloem ''''.poet rhymes with coit, to have sex.purple rhymes with curple, the hindquarters of a horse or donkey, hirple, to walk with a limp, nurple, the act of roughly twisting a nipple.rhythm rhymes with Lytham, a seaside town in England; and smitham, fine malt or ore dust.silver rhymes with chilver, a female lamb.siren rhymes with gyron, a type of triangle in heraldry; environ, meaning to encircle or surround; the given names Byron and Myron; and apeiron, meaning infinity.soldier rhymes with the surnames Bolger and Folgertoilet rhymes with oillet, an eyelet.woman rhymes with toman , a Persian coin and military division.yttrium rhymes with liberum arbitrium, a legal term.