Assonance: definition and examples in poems, songs and rap

Assonance is the repetition of the same vowel sound in words that sit close together. The consonants around the vowel can change, so the words don’t have to rhyme: rise and shine, home alone, sweet dreams. Poets use it to make a line sound musical, and songwriters and rappers use it as a looser kind of rhyme.

The word is pronounced AS-uh-nuhns.

This guide covers examples from everyday speech, poems, songs and rap, how assonance differs from consonance and alliteration, and how to use it in your own writing.

Assonance examples

You already use assonance every day. Many common phrases stick because of a repeated vowel:

Phrase	Repeated vowel sound
rise and shine	long i (rise, shine)
high as a kite	long i (high, kite)
time flies	long i (time, flies)
sweet dreams	long e (sweet, dreams)
home alone	long o (home, alone)
stone cold	long o (stone, cold)
blue moon	oo (blue, moon)
mad as a hatter	short a (mad, hatter)
the early bird catches the worm	ur (early, bird, worm)
a stitch in time saves nine	long i (time, nine)

Here are a few full sentences. Read them out loud and you’ll hear the vowel come back:

• I ride the night line by the riverside. (long i)
• She leaves the keys on the seat. (long e)
• The old road goes home slow. (long o)
• Dan sat back and laughed. (short a)
• The crumbling thunder of the drums. (short u)

Notice that assonance is about sound, not spelling. Blue and through share a vowel sound with different letters. Love and move share letters but not the sound.

Assonance in poetry

Poets use assonance to tie a line together without the obvious click of a rhyme.

Edgar Allan Poe leaned on it more than almost anyone. In “The Bells”, the short e rings like the bells he’s describing:

Hear the mellow wedding bells, Golden bells!

In “The Raven”, the ur sound runs through one line:

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

And in “Annabel Lee”, the long i stretches the line out like a sigh:

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

John Keats opens “Ode on a Grecian Urn” with the same long i, slowed down:

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

William Wordsworth pairs two vowels in “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”, a long o in the first line and a long e in the second:

A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

William Blake stacks assonance on top of his rhyme in “The Tyger”. Tyger shares its long i with bright and night:

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night;

Assonance vs consonance vs alliteration

These three are easy to mix up, because all of them repeat a sound. The difference is which sound, and where.

Device	What repeats	Where	Example
Assonance	A vowel sound	Usually inside the words	home alone
Consonance	A consonant sound	Anywhere, often the middle or end	pitter patter
Alliteration	The first sound	The start of the words	wild and windy

A few things to know:

• Alliteration is usually a kind of consonance. It’s consonance that happens at the start of words.
• Lines often use more than one. Poe’s line from “The Raven” has alliteration on s (silken, sad) and assonance on ur (uncertain, purple, curtain).
• Consonance at the end of words makes a different slant rhyme. Heart and hurt share their consonants and change the vowel. Home and alone do the opposite.

Assonance vs rhyme

A perfect rhyme matches the stressed vowel and every sound after it: night and light. Assonance only asks for the vowel: night and life.

So every perfect rhyme contains assonance, but assonance on its own is a looser match. When you use it at the ends of lines in place of a full rhyme, it’s called an assonant rhyme or vowel rhyme, and it’s the most common kind of slant rhyme.

Assonance can also sit in the middle of lines, where it works like a soft internal rhyme.

What effect does assonance have?

• It makes lines sound connected. Repeated vowels link words together, so a line feels written rather than just said.
• It sets the pace. Long vowels such as oh, ee and oo take longer to say, so they slow a line down. Short vowels such as i and a speed it up.
• It sets the mood. Slow, open vowels suit sad, calm or dreamy lines. Short, clipped vowels feel tense or playful.
• It helps memory. Sound patterns make phrases stick, which is why so many sayings and slogans use assonance.
• It’s subtle. Listeners feel assonance without noticing it, where a hard rhyme can sound forced.

Assonance in songs

Vowels are the part of a word you actually sing. Consonants start and stop the note, but the vowel is what gets held. That makes assonance especially strong in songs: when two words share a vowel, the ear hears them as rhyming, even if the endings are different.

Look at the line endings in this verse:

We were burning through the summer like a flame Every promise that you made, I kept it safe Now the city doesn’t even know my name And I’m learning how to love you from away

Flame and name are a perfect rhyme. Safe and away only share the long a. Sung over a melody, all four land as rhymes, and the writer had far more words to choose from.

Assonance also works inside a line, to make it smoother to sing:

Slow smoke over the road I only know I can’t go home

Almost every stressed word leans on the same long o, which gives the line a tired, heavy feel before the melody does anything.

If you’re choosing a pattern for your line endings, see our guide to rhyme schemes. Assonant rhymes count in any of them.

Assonance in rap

Rap takes assonance further than any other style. Instead of rhyming one word at the end of the bar, rappers repeat a whole pattern of vowels, across the bar and into the next one:

Late shift, eight kids, paying rent with patience Fake friends fade, I just wait and stay adjacent

The long a comes back nine times in two bars, and late shift and eight kids repeat a two-vowel pattern. None of those words needs to rhyme perfectly. The vowels carry the flow.

This is how multisyllabic rhymes are built: you match the vowel sounds of a whole phrase, then pick any consonants that make sense.

Assonance words by vowel sound

Use this table as a starting point. Every word in a row shares a vowel sound, and most of them don’t rhyme perfectly with each other.

Vowel sound	Words
Long a (ay)	late, name, safe, rain, break, wait, change
Long e (ee)	dream, sleep, leave, feel, street, need, believe
Long i (eye)	night, time, life, ride, mind, sign, alive
Long o (oh)	home, road, slow, cold, hope, alone, smoke
Long u (oo)	moon, move, truth, blue, room, lose, through
Short a	back, hand, last, sad, black, catch, glass
Short e	bed, left, rest, end, breath, said, friend
Short i	kiss, still, lips, give, quick, listen, skin
Short o	rock, stop, drop, lock, body, promise, got
Short u (uh)	love, blood, enough, done, run, touch, young
ow	down, loud, town, around, out, crowd, now

For any specific word, a rhyme finder lists slant rhymes next to the perfect ones, sorted by syllable count.

How to use assonance in your writing

1. Pick the word that matters most. Usually it’s the last stressed word in the line.
2. Say it out loud and find its vowel. In alone, the vowel is a long o.
3. Collect words with the same vowel. Home, road, cold, hope, smoke, slow. Ignore the endings for now.
4. Place two or three of them on stressed beats. Assonance only works where the voice lands. A matching vowel in an unstressed word like the or of won’t be heard.
5. Keep them close. Within the same line or the next one. Too far apart and the ear loses the link.
6. Read it back. If the line sounds like a tongue twister, take one out.

Common mistakes

• Matching letters, not sounds. Love, move and stone all have an o, and none of them match. Trust your ear.
• Using too much. One vowel repeated six times in a line starts to sound like a joke. Two or three is usually enough, unless you’re writing a rap chain on purpose.
• Hiding it on weak syllables. Put the repeated vowel on the stressed beats.
• Forcing a word for its sound. If the word doesn’t mean what you need, the listener will notice. Meaning comes first.

Practice exercise

Write one four-line verse about a late-night drive. Choose a single long vowel, for example long o, and use it at least twice in every line, on stressed words. Don’t use any perfect rhymes.

Then rewrite the same verse with a short vowel, such as short i. Read both out loud. The first will sound slower and heavier, and the second quicker and more nervous, even though the story hasn’t changed.

Finding assonance in Lyric Studio

In Lyric Studio you can select any word in your lyrics to see perfect, slant and multisyllabic rhymes with syllable counts. The slant rhymes are mostly assonance: words that share your word’s vowel with a different ending. It’s a quick way to find the word that sounds right and still says what you mean.