Crossword clues for assonance
assonance
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Assonance \As"so*nance\, n. [Cf. F. assonance. See Assonant.]
Resemblance of sound. ``The disagreeable assonance of `sheath' and `sheathed.'''
--Steevens.-
(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; as, calamo and platano, baby and chary.
The assonance is peculiar to the Spaniard.
--Hallam. -
Incomplete correspondence.
Assonance between facts seemingly remote.
--Lowell.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1727, "resemblance of sounds between words," from French assonance, from assonant, from Latin assonantem (nominative assonans), present participle of assonare "to resound, respond to," from ad- "to" (see ad-) + sonare "to sound" (see sonata). Properly, in prosody, "rhyming of accented vowels, but not consonants" (1823).
Wiktionary
n. (context prosody English) The repetition of similar or identical vowel sounds (though with different consonants), usually in literature or poetry.
WordNet
n. the repetition of similar vowels in the stressed syllables of successive words [syn: vowel rhyme]
Wikipedia
Assonance is the 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. Assonance does not have to be a rhyme; the identity of which depends merely on sequence of both vowel and consonant sounds.
Assonance occurs more often in verse than in prose. It is used in (mainly modern) English-language poetry, and is particularly important in Old French, Spanish and the Celtic languages.
Usage examples of "assonance".
There was simply not the time to cast it into rhyme or metre, to take care with assonance and ambiguity.
The rhythmical structure of poetry, and above all the device of rhyme, is essentially immature and childish: the use by poets of rhythmical beat and verbal assonance is simply the endeavour to captivate what is a primeval and even barbarous instinct.
The bikes on the walls, on the ceiling, seemed to strike up an assonance with the oil and metal at the back of his throat.
It is for one thing in a metre I invented (depending on trisyllabic assonances or near-assonances, which is so difficult that except in this one example I have never been able to use it again – it just blew out in a single impulse).
The song had words, but the multitude of voices drowned out the meaning in a million blended assonances.
Or where this is broken, as in ym/in, we have recognition of the fact that m/n, though technically made at different contact points, have in their nasality and resonance a similarity which overrides the more mechanical distinction - a fact which is reflected, shall we say, both in the case of m/n interchange in real languages (such as Greek), or in my inability to feel greatly wounded by m/n assonances in a rhyming poem.
Well, even as there are rhymes for the eye, so you will find that there are assonances and alliterations.
Ringed and ringleted, perfumed and pomaded, fringed and furbelowed, beaded and brocaded, he combined nature and nurture so overpoweringly, in fact in such an absolute assonance of synesthetic alliteration, that it became a positive pleasure to remind one's self that the underlying essence of his official cachet, like the musk of sex and the ambergris of the most ancient perfumes, was—Alex bit silently but savagely down on the word—garbage.
In his poetry he strives to embody the ideals proclaimed in his prose work, which are, first, to write nothing that is not moral and elevating in tone, and, second, to express himself in versification which is obedient to the laws of regular musical composition, in rhyme, rhythm, vowel assonance, alliteration, and phrasings.