Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 February 13

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February 13

translate "navratan korma" from hindi (?)

I had this dish at the indian restaurant, navratan korma. It's my new favorite food! It was sooo good. What does the name mean? I assume it's Hindi, but maybe not? 98.247.245.124 (talk) 01:56, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

According to Navratan Korma - Allrecipes, 'Navratan' means 'nine gems'. See also Korma.

-- Wavelength (talk) 02:51, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

French Translation Question

I want to express this in French without having to use the subjunctive: Before I had the opportunity to respond, she ordered her main dish. Thank you!--Elatanatari (talk) 02:56, 13 February 2009 (UTC) Or the infinitive. --Elatanatari (talk) 02:59, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Avant ma réponse? —Angr 07:46, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

another way would be: "Je n'avais pas encore pu répondre qu'elle commandait (déjà) son plat principal". It sounds a bit like a novel from the 1930s, however. --Xuxl (talk) 16:34, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

But why should you want to express it in French without using the resources of French? --ColinFine (talk) 17:20, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Good question.See here [1].--Doalex (talk) 11:51, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

2 book titles, Latin → English

These are bibliographies (or something similar) compiled and published by Reinhold Röhrich, a German historian. I'd appreciate help in translating their titles into English:

• Bibliotheca Geographica Palestinae (Berlin, 1890)
• Regesta Regny Hierosolymitani (Innsbruck, 1893)

Bonus appreciation for anyone who would provide that author's years of birth/death. -- Deborahjay (talk) 07:05, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

The first would be literally "Geographical Library of Palestine", but I suppose "Bibliography" is what they mean by "Library" (both being a collection of books). The second is tougher; my guess is "Collection of the Kingdom of Jerusalem" with Regny being a misspelling of Regni. Regesta is hard; it's the neuter plural form of the past participle of regero, which according to the Oxford Latin Dictionary can mean figuratively "to make a collection of, pile up"; so I'm taking regesta to mean "things that have been made a collection of", i.e. a collection. As for the German historian, I can't find his dates right now, but the correct spelling of his name seems to be Reinhold Röhricht; maybe you'll have better luck finding them when you Google that spelling instead. —Angr 07:35, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

You're right on about Regni: The "Crusader Studies" weblink provided by --130.237.179.182, below, gives the title as Regesta Regni Hierosolymitani. -- Deborahjay (talk) 13:06, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

PS: Our article on the Oxford Latin Dictionary says that it's replaced Lewis & Short, but L&S is still better for late Latin: regesta means "a list, catalogue, register". —Angr 07:43, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Reinhold Röhricht (1842–1905) - link. Yes, I agree the former would be 'Geographical Library', although it was customary at that time to refer to a bibliographical book as 'bibliotheca', so 'Geographical Bibliography of Palestine' would be better. Note, though, that it's customary to refer to the title in its original language if it hasn't been translated. --130.237.179.182 (talk) 12:31, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh, indeed! The Latin titles are inline text, with the meaning given as a parenthetical gloss directly following each. Thank you both so much! -- Deborahjay (talk) 13:02, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Incidentally, the two books are available online at [2] and [3]. —Angr 13:38, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

If you're also wondering what those books are all about, the Bibliotheca is a collection of medieval descriptions of the Holy Land (taken from pilgrims and travellers), and the Regesta contains an edition of all the surviving charters and other assorted royal diplomatic documents from the Kingdom of Jerusalem (i.e. the ones produced by, or sent to, the royal chancery; ecclesiastical documents are in other publications). Rohricht also wrote lots about the Fifth Crusade, and wrote the first real modern history of the Kingdom. He was a typical 19th century German scholar, dispassionate and meticulous, and although his historiography is now very out of date, the Regesta is still extremely useful to crusade historians. (Compare this to the 19th century French historians who are always raving nationalists or stupidly lazy editors.) I know this wasn't the question, but I got excited when I saw Rohricht and thought I would share anyway! Adam Bishop (talk) 05:09, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

In case it is missed in Angr's post, we now have shiny new article about Reinhold Röhricht. Adam Bishop (talk) 20:59, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Words with exactly one rhyme

We know that words that rhyme with other words are the exception rather than the rule. That aside, most rhyming words seem to have multiple rhymes. I'm looking for some examples of word pairs that rhyme with each other, but with no other words, Or at least with no other commonly used words. Can anyone suggest some examples? English only, please. -- JackofOz (talk) 11:43, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

It will depend, of course, on what you count as rhyming. This is obviously important to consider for the tight restriction you impose, JackofOz. For example, in classic English rhyme a word does not rhyme with itself or with a homophone. (In French practice, homophones rhyme: pas meaning "not" is very commonly rhymed with pas meaning "step", even though they have the same etymological source.) The stress pattern must be right in certain ways: plinth can never make a full rhyme with Corinth, but arguably it can with labyrinth, whose third syllable bears a secondary stress. And Corinth cannot rhyme with labyrinth. What do you do with schwa pronunciations, and rhotic versus non-rhotic pronunciations?

Let's see how we go with adherence to standard rules, anyway. (I'm watching, ruler in hand.)

Region rhymes only with legion if we exclude proper nouns.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 12:28, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

[Moved down to here.–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T–]I'm not sure what you mean by "classic English rhyme," but in Middle English (Chaucer and Gower, for example) "a word does not rhyme with itself," but rhymes with homophomes and rhymes with the same "word" used as different parts of speech (for instance, of help [verb] with help [noun] are clearly acceptable, since they are very common). Deor (talk) 03:46, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Since I am directly addressed here, I'll come back. Deor, please don't post in the middle of another post. Things soon get messy, making it hard for readers to work out who said what.

By classic English rhyme I mean the dominant cluster of norms for rhyme in Modern English, including Shakespeare and his contemporaries. These are well established, though not accurately shown in our article Rhyme, as things stand. I do mean norms, not invariable practices. Shelley rhymed Greek and sick, but he certainly respected the prevailing norms. We would not include Chaucer and his contemporaries, who I agree famously rhymed homophones: seke meaning "sick" with seke meaning "seek", right at the start of the Prologue. Just like French, which is not surprising since rhyme in the English of Chaucer's time was pretty well an import from the Continent (and French was still widely spoken in cultured English circles).

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 04:21, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

You'll have to exclude (one pronunciation of) collegian also. Which is fair enough: it's a horrible word. Algebraist 12:36, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I was half expecting someone to enquire about qualifications. Proper nouns are ok (no Scrabble rules here). Rhyming with itself is a trivial case, so trivial I hadn't even considered it. No offence. Being part of a word pair would exclude such a case. Homophones are of course included. I'm not too concerned about the other matters, as long as a reasonable case for a rhyme can be argued, or a context can be concocted in which the rhyme works. Hinge and fringe - squarely in; either of them with orange (órinj) - out, because the -inj isn't stressed and can't be made to. Region and legion - that would have been a good example, but since I have no issue with proper nouns, and you say there is such a beast, it wouldn't count. Btw, what is the proper noun in question? -- JackofOz (talk) 12:47, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Norwegian, mayhap? Algebraist 16:21, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but three rhyming words just call out for a limerick:

There once was a frisky Norwegian

Who entered the French Foreign Legion

When visiting Paree

He came down with VD

A bad rash in his private region. --LarryMac | Talk 18:55, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Norwegian? French? Paree? We must be able to work Bernadotte into this somehow. Algebraist 19:01, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking of limericks too, but decided I'd wait until we found a real pair of words that rhyme only with each other to make lines 3 and 4. The last line needs work as its rhythm is off. —Angr 19:03, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I dropped the first word from the last line. Who knew writing limericks could be so hard? --LarryMac | Talk 20:48, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

suggestion: On a trip to Paree. The last line could contain lesion. —Tamfang (talk) 19:58, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

And if Norwegian, then Glaswegian and Galwegian. —Angr 16:33, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

See RhymeZone rhyming dictionary and thesaurus. -- Wavelength (talk) 15:43, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

How about vacuum and continuum, although not always pronounced so they rhyme. The "VAK-YOU-UM" pronunciation rhymes, though. StuRat (talk) 16:38, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't say they rhyme no matter which usual pronunciation of "vacuum" you use. Two words rhyme when they're the same from the vowel of the stressed syllable to the end, so "vacuum" can only rhyme with other words that end in "AK-yoom" (or "AK-you-um"), while "continuum" can only rhyme with other words than end in "IN-you-um". —Angr 16:42, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, precisely. I couldn't have put it better myself. It's all about the stress pattern, not about the commonality of certain letters per se. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:14, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

JackofOz, of course it is not about sharing letters. Angr, that's right up to a point (see below). It rules out a word as rhyming with itself, which Jack has thought trivial. Well, it is not entirely trivial. It needs to be pointed out for novices in writing English verse, and it both introduces and illustrates the point about homophones. Jack, why do you say "Homophones are of course included"? They are standardly excluded in English rhyme, as I have pointed out. Even the individuation of words is hard, as I show for French pas, in its two quite different senses but sharedsingle etymology. How about thing and Thing (not always capitalised: a public or legislative assembly in Scandinavian countries, as in Thingman, or Iceland's Althing)? Same etymological source, spelling, and pronunciation, but one word or two?

Angr, let's look at your point again:

Two words rhyme when they're the same from the vowel of the stressed syllable to the end

Many words satisfy the underlined condition but do not rhyme. Sister and assister do not rhyme, because the stressed syllables start with the same single consonant (sound). Same for point and appoint. Same for reply and apply, whose stressed syllables start with the same consonant cluster. On the other hand, bring, ring, spring, awing ("on the wing"), and string all rhyme together. You also do not account for secondary stress, since your mention of the stressed syllable suggests that a word must have only one. But no: considering may be rhymed with thing (not with ring or wring), and also with bucketing (not with befitting, acquiring, or gathering).

LarryMac, well done. B+. Your rhymes are all right but your rhythm needs fixing. (Note the alliterations and assonances in that rather rhythmic sentence: Your RHymes are all Right but your RHythm needs fixing.) Try this, for example:

There once was a frisky Norwegian

Who entered the French Foreign Legion

When once in Paree

He came down with VD:

A rash in his most private region.

Algebraist, a good point about collegian, which rhymes with region but not with legion (assuming schwas).

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 21:23, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

[Moved down a little. Please don't post in the middle of others' posts–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T–]I can't resist:

All the Dutch girls and Norwegians

(and believe me of them there are legions)

will invite you to their house

but NOT let you reach down their blouse

Nor way down into their nether regions.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.120.236.246 (talk) 02:25, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Noetica, I didn't imagine my statement to be an exhaustive definition of rhyme. Another aspect we haven't mentioned (partly because Jack's original question rules it out) is the possibility of a rhyme's "jurisdiction" spreading across a word boundary. Two of my favorite rhymes are in Steely Dan's "My Old School": oleander with I can't stand her, and California with tried to warn ya. —Angr 22:11, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

See Broken rhyme. -- Wavelength (talk) 16:10, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

One way to generate some is to test the examples of possible syllable-endings from English phonology#Coda in the Rhyming dictionary linked by Wavelength. Some of the examples are the only words in English with that particular ending; others are rare enough to have only one rhyme. I haven't tried them all, but here are three possible pairs that came up: belch/squelch, marsh/harsh, carve/starve. WikiJedits (talk) 21:34, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

That's the sort of thing I was after, thank you WikiJedits. I've taken the liberty of highlighting the words you identified. Marsh and harsh would rhyme with Karsh (of Ottawa), but not everyone's heard of him. Noetica, I always appreciate your learned contributions, but I wasn't after some sort of precise definition of rhyme. "We know one when we hear one" - is the most useful definition for the purposes of this question. Englishes vary, and what rhymes in one place may not do so elsewhere. But if it rhymes anywhere, I'd accept it. I'd love to hear what offerings you may have. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:47, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Marsh and harsh seem good, Wik. Words ending in -elch (sound) include squelch, quelch, welch (in one pronunciation) and the less common melch and kelch. For -arve we have the rarities larve, tarve, and varve.

And let us not forget felch. -Elmer Clark (talk) 22:26, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I need to read the dictionary more! :) Finished playing the the rhyme generator - try these pairs, which may work for common words, though I'd be interested to learn the obscure ones that rhyme as well. stomped/prompt, length/strength, warps/corpse, gulped/sculpt, faith/eighth, scrounge/lounge. I have not tried any multi-syllabic words, Jack, though maybe/baby might work. Best, WikiJedits (talk) 03:00, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Excellent. I have a slight quibble with faith/eighth - that's not quite a rhyme in my book, because I say the word "eight" followed by "th" (the spelling doesn't reflect that) but others may pronounce eighth differently. Thanks. -- JackofOz (talk) 03:43, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

JackofOz, I understand that this sort of precision is not what you wanted. Unfortunately though, rhyme is an exceedingly tricky phenomenon, and if you specify the task so precisely (a pair of words, each of which rhymes only with the other), it is literally not possible to give an answer that ignores precision. There is, in fact, much more that could be said – even about the heading of this section and how it is at variance with the formulation in terms of rhyming pairs. And more beyond that, too! (See the slight reformulation I gave in brackets just now.) Nevertheless I understand that this sort of reply can be annoying, so I'll retreat to the wings for now.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 22:00, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

See List of English words without rhymes#Words with obscure perfect rhymes.

-- Wavelength (talk) 22:24, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

See Reduplication#Examples (sub-subsection "English") and Shm-reduplication.

-- Wavelength (talk) 05:27, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Wavelength. The obscure perfect rhymes can be added to the list. The reduplication examples wouldn't generally count: words like clap and trap have multiple rhymes, but claptrap itself has none (maybe that's a bad example. I can think of backslap, which might suffice for a rhyme in some contexts; but in general, reduplicated words don't rhyme). Virtually any word can be reduplicated à la "baby-schmaby", so we can just about double the entire OED if we count them all as independent words. I'd prefer to put them into a special category and discount them for this purpose.

Noetica, I was a bit glib about homophones. You're right, of course, they are standardly excluded as rhymes, even if they do meet the criteria for words that rhyme.

The list at this stage (re-arranged alphabetically) is:

• belch/squelch
• carve/starve
• corpse/warps
• (?) eighth/faith (I still wonder if anyone pronounces "faith" as fate-th, or "eighth" as eh-th)
• gulped/sculpt
• harsh/marsh
• length/strength
• lounge/scrounge
• prompt/stomped
• and the obscure perfect rhymes.

I thank you all for your input, and if any more come to light, I'd be very pleased to hear of them. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:58, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

All done? I'll comment on that list:

• belch/squelch [welch is perhaps not obscure, even as pronounced to rhyme with these]
• carve/starve [good; obscure others only]
• corpse/warps [thorps and a few others might be obscure; but you do not exclude proper nouns, so consider Thorpes, Thorpe's; also Australorps]
• (?) eighth/faith (I still wonder if anyone pronounces "faith" as fate-th, or "eighth" as eh-th) [doubtful indeed, because of the aberrant pronunciation of eighth; an acceptable pair might be faith/wraith (see analysis below)]
• gulped/sculpt [no, there is also pulped, along with some rarities]
• harsh/marsh [good; there is only the obscure démarche (in SOED, so perhaps not "foreign"); it rhymes with harsh, not with marsh]
• length/strength [good]
• lounge/scrounge [good; there is only the osbolete rounge, variant of obsolete ronge]
• prompt/stomped [no: romped, chomped, clomped, swamped (for most of us), the rare pomped, dompt, and a few others]

We could add salve/valve to the list, and I'm sure there are many others. One remaining conceptual difficulty is this. Consider again region, legion, collegian, and suppose for the moment that we do exclude proper nouns. Region rhymes with legion, and also with collegian; but collegian does not rhyme with legion. Because rhyming is not logically transitive, our brief here is not clear. Legion rhymes only with region, but region has more than one rhyme. So legion qualifies according to the heading of this section, but neither it nor region can figure in a uniquely rhyming pair as specified in the initial post: "word pairs that rhyme with each other, but with no other words". The case of garth, Garth, and hearth illustrates this problem and also some others (supposing that garth, one entry for which is not qualified as rare in SOED, is accepted). Hearth rhymes with garth and Garth, which do not rhyme with each other. Does any of these rhyme with path, or bath? Depends on your rhoticism or absence thereof, and on how the vowels of path and bath are realised. Are Garth and garth to count as distinct words? Surely, if only by having distinct etymologies. But what about Faith and faith? One is a woman's name, the other is an abstract common noun; but the former is an application of the latter. So how do we sort out the trio wraith, faith, Faith?

Not all pedantry is mere pedantry; or, perhaps more accurately, what is commonly denigrated as pedantry is often in fact a level of precision that not everyone immediately understands the need for. And this is a reference desk, where experts are called upon for their expert opinions and analyses. :)

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 22:25, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Rhyming dictionary made of paper

I found these rhyming pairs of words in a rhyming dictionary made of paper.

hemp, kemp; coax, hoax (so coaxed, hoaxed); smooth, soothe; mouch, bedouch; rabid, tabid; cactus, practice; badger, cadger; gradient, radiant; cadre, padre; safer, wafer; agile, fragile; farrago, Chicago; flagship, hagship; bailiff, Caliph; attainder, remainder; dainty, fainty; faithful, scatheful; ballad, salad; balance, valance; gallant, talent; pallor, valor; ambit, gambit; bandit, pandit; anguish, languish; ankle, rankle; bantam, phantom; anther, panther; grapnel, shrapnel; lappet, tappet; barrage, garage; argent, sergeant; darken, hearken; darkling, sparkling; farness, harness; parsley, sparsely; dartle, startle; Ascot, mascot; khaki, saki; audit, plaudit; launder, maunder; austral, claustral; javelin, ravelin; cadaver, palaver; cavern, tavern; navvy, savvy; keyboard, seaboard; deafest, prefaced; fealty, realty; cerement, endearment; specious, facetious; Eden, Sweden; Edgeware, sledge-wear; medium, tedium; fleecy, greasy; creepier, sleepier; cheaply, deeply; peevish, thievish; egret, regret; beldam, seldom; gelding, welding; felon, melon; gremlin, Kremlin; emu, seamew; henceforth, thenceforth; Hendon, tendon; pennon, tenon; lengthen, strengthen; central, ventral; menu, venue; genus, Venus; creole, key-hole; Epping, stepping; peppy, Sheppey; frequence, sequence; emergency, urgency; cherish, perish; dermal, thermal; Bernard, gurnard; errand, gerund; thyrsus, versus; person, worsen; nescience, prescience; bestial, celestial; prestige, vestige; presto, manifesto; detail, retail; devious, previous; Everest, cleverest; exile, flexile; extant, sextant; sextile, textile; gibbon, ribbon; icy, spicy; kiddish, Yiddish; midgy, ridgy; kidney, Sidney; briefly, chiefly; Niger, tiger; digest (noun), obligest; biggin, piggin; highland, island; figment, pigment; digress, tigress; lilacs, smilax; milder, wilder; milken, silken; brilliant, resilient; whilom, asylum; image, scrimmage; finis, Guinness; minnow, winnow; pinto, Shinto; ripened, stipend; hippo, Lippo; tipster, whipster; siphon, hyphen; gyrate, irate; purloin, sirloin; birchen, urchin; hireling, squireling; churlish, girlish; discal, fiscal; reprisal, paradisal; discard, Liscard; discount, miscount; bisect, trisect; visit, exquisite; Christmas, isthmus; fitness, witness; ritual, habitual; livid, vivid; boarish, whorish; coastal, postal; lobster, mobster; cockney, knock-knee; concoction, decoction; bodice, goddess; modus, nodus; coffee, toffee; lofty, softy; ogress, progress; column, solemn; collet, wallet; collier, jollier; colored, dullard; coltish, doltish; combat, wombat; nonage, Swanage; lonely, only; longly, wrongly; bonnet, sonnet; onyx, phonics; booster, rooster; goody, woody; contract, entr'acte; mopish, Popish; poplar, toppler; option, adoption; chorale, morale; Koran, Oran; cordial, primordial; lordship, wardship; cornet, hornet; torpor, warper; corpus, porpoise; horror, abhorror; corset, Dorset; cortege, portage, cortex, vortex; courtly, portly; doorway, Norway; bosky, drosky; osmic, cosmic; Cossacks, Trossachs; ghostess, hostess; ghostly, mostly; nostrum, rostrum; dotard, motored; clothing, loathing; hotness, squatness; doublet, sub-let; loudly, proudly; cowboy, ploughboy; doughboy, hautboy; roughen, toughen; fountain, mountain; dovetail, love-tale; loyalty, royalty; suave, Zouave; Cuba, tuba; bubblish, publish; crucial, fiducial; mufti, tufty (spelling corrected); druid, fluid; nuisance, usance; Bulgar, vulgar; sultry, adult'ry; tumbril, umbril; plummet, summit; autumnal, columnal; crumple, rumple; spoonful, tuneful; bungle, jungle; junket, plunket; sunlit, unlit; Cupid, stupid; drupelet, quadruplet; couple, supple; guppy, puppy; curlew, purlieu; purvey, survey; buskin, Ruskin; gusset, russet; Prussia, Russia; fustian, combustion; fustic, rustic; ruttish, sluttish; pluvial, alluvial; syntax, tin-tacks.

-- Wavelength (talk) 02:22, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

It seems I really didn't think through my question very well before asking it - to say the least. I won't say any more except: thank you, Noetica, for setting me straight about the intricacies of rhymes; and Wow!, Wavelength. I must now set about writing a poem using all these examples. -- JackofOz (talk) 02:47, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to you, JackofOz, for your gracious collegiality – and for a fascinating topic, and for the opportunity to explore beyond it into the intricacies of rhyme generally. As often happens here, I found myself directed into researches and clarifications that I might not have embarked on otherwise.

And, er, Wavelength: I join in the general astonishment and admiration.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 03:28, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not going to go through that mighty list, but the first two at least are dodgy: hemp and kemp rhyme with temp, while hoax and coax rhyme with croaks. Algebraist 03:36, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I realize that coax and hoax are disqualified, but I found them with the others, and I thought of coaxed and hoaxed, which I did not find. I have just corrected the spelling of minnow in line 17.

-- Wavelength (talk) 03:52, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I have wikified some words [including common ones] for the convenience of readers [including English learners]. -- Wavelength (talk) 05:46, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I have wikified some more. -- Wavelength (talk) 06:33, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I have wikified some more. -- Wavelength (talk) 08:21, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Someone may wish to start an article with a list of rhyming pairs of words. Here are some suggested titles: List of monogamous rhymes, List of closed pairs of rhyming words, List of words with exactly one rhyming partner each, List of rhyming couples, List of rhyming sets limited to two members each. -- Wavelength (talk) 15:55, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

The dictionary which I consulted did not claim that no other words rhyme with these words, and neither did I, but I selected them as candidates for determining whether they conform to the desired criteria. They can be checked in http://www.rhymezone.com/ (which I linked above, showing the page title from the title bar), http://www.rhymer.com/, and http://rhyme.poetry.com/. See also Rhyme#External links. -- Wavelength (talk) 20:47, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I may have provided the spark, but you've done the bulk of the work, Wavelength, so I think the honours belong to you. What an unxpected outcome to what was really just a question stemming from idle curiosity. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:20, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

For the words which I did not wikify, readers can look for definitions by using the online dictionary aggregator at http://www.onelook.com/. I have just removed the extra bracket from after drupelet in the second last line. -- Wavelength (talk) 23:25, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

The editors of that "rhyming dictionary made of paper" ought to do a spot of proofreading, it seems to me. How does Niger rhyme with tiger? Or genus with Venus (and what about penis, anyway)? Cadaver and palaver? Prestige and vestige? Bodice and goddess? Whilom and asylum? None of these rhyme, at least not with my accent.

And as for Edgeware and sledge-wear... The first doesn't even exist (It's Edgware), and the second appears to have been made up purely to rhyme with it. What is sledge-wear? If it's something you wear to go sledging, it seems a little odd that no retailers sell it. Malcolm XIV (talk) 00:28, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree with most of those, Malcolm, but genus, Venus and penis are all exact rhymes in my lingo. How does genus differ from Venus in your lingo? Some say palaver with a short /a/ in the stressed syllable, some with a long vowel - "ah". -- JackofOz (talk) 01:00, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I pronounce genus as /ˈdʒɛnɘs/ for some meanings and /'dʒiːnɘs/ for others, Venus as /'viːnɘs/ and penis as /ˈpiːnɪs/. The OED agrees with me on everything except /ˈdʒɛnɘs/ (no idea where I got that pronunciation from). Algebraist 01:08, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I'd pronounce it /ˈdʒɛnɘs/. The NODE gives both pronunciations. Malcolm XIV (talk) 19:23, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

We have no less an authority on rhyming than Cole Porter endorsing the "Venus"/"penis" rhyme (in his unpublished risque version):

You're the top! You're Miss Pinkham's tonic.

You're the top! You're a high colonic;

You're the burning heat of a bridal suite in use,

You're the breasts of Venus, You're King Kong's penis,

You're self-abuse!

You're an arch from the Rome collection.

You're the starch in a groom's erection.

I'm a eunuch who has undergone an 'op',

But if, baby, I'm the bottom

You're the top.

- Nunh-huh 01:12, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

See Major question about Niger.

There once was a lady from Niger

Who rode on the back of a tiger.

They came from the ride with the lady inside

And the smile on the face of the tiger.

-- Wavelength (talk) 04:53, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

W. S. Gilbert had his character, Koko, (in The Mikado (1885)) say the following line:

Yes, I like to see a tiger

From the Congo or the Niger....

We will, for the moment, assume that he knew quite well the range of tigers, he just needed a good rhyme. Bunthorne (talk) 05:56, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

If Niger and tiger are counted as rhyming with each other, then they are disqualified because of liger. However, if the first two words are not counted as rhyming with each other, then liger and tiger count as a rhyming pair of words. In this exercise where a rhyme ending is to be possessed by exactly two words fulfilling the criteria, finding another word can either validate or invalidate a pair of words. For that reason, keeping a list of hitherto "rhymeless" words is useful, because one of them might be matched with a newly found word. (See List of English words without rhymes.) -- Wavelength (talk) 06:13, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

for Malcolm XIV, in Oz, sledge-wear may be cricketing clothes. For Jackoz, Karsh has a wikipedia article and 12,700 ghits. "When the famous start thinking of immortality, they call for Karsh of Ottawa." Hmmm, pity he died in 2002, age 93. For Wavelength, you sure put the length into wavelength. garsp :) Julia Rossi (talk) 06:35, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Yep, I was aware of Karsh (I mentioned his name up above somewhere). But ta anyway, Julia. -- JackofOz (talk) 06:44, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Was responding to your comment "but not everyone's heard of him". So I looked him up, :) Julia Rossi (talk) 07:09, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Wavelength, my learned and fiercely industrious rival in obsessiveness, seems to have momentarily forgotten the following rhymes for tiger (assuming schwa, and no final /r/): biga, Auriga, striga, saiga, and quadriga. Mercifully, taiga does not rhyme with tiger; but it does rhyme with biga, Auriga, striga, saiga, and quadriga.

There is a genuine problem in determining whether a word is common or rare. Many will not have heard of ligers; myself, I have been lucky enough to observe them at first hand (Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, China, February 2006 – not at all far from taiga-country, in fact). Conversely, for me the biga is as alien as Betelgeuse, though Julia Rossi will instantly know it as a two-horsed chariot of Roman antiquity (to be distinguished from the four-horsed quadriga).

So the whole exercise is rather idle, though no more idle than a good number of topics in pure mathematics that people get grants to do research in.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 07:22, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Definitely en charrette of some kind. :) Julia Rossi (talk) 07:58, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

However, there's a lot to be said for idleness, and Søren Kierkegaard has started us off: Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good. He's followed by Robert Louis Stevenson: A faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity. Kirky and Stevo are now my personal idols. -- JackofOz (talk) 14:36, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

The "rhyming dictionary made of paper" which I consulted is one of 14 dictionaries in the single-volume Encyclopedia of Dictionaries, edited by John Gage Allee, Ph.D., and published by Ottenheimer Publishers, Inc.,
in 1966 in the United States. It uses the rhotic accent. -- Wavelength (talk) 17:01, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

This page has a picture of another edition of the book. -- Wavelength (talk) 17:27, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Just a few comments on some of the above:

Cortege/portage: definitely not a rhyme in my dialect. Cortege is stressed on the final syllable, which is sort of like "aizh", not "idge".

Cuba/tuba: what about tuber?

Gelding/welding: what about melding?

Lowland/Poland: maybe in some dialects, but not in mine

Milken/silken: also rhymes with Silkin (e.g. John Silkin)

Prestige/vestige: does any dialect pronounce prestige on the first syllable?

Prussia/Russia: both rhyme with usher. But there's the pair Prussian/Russian (which might rhyme with "hushen", if such a word exists)

Taiga: an interesting one. In Russian, it's pronounced with the stress on –ga: tay-GA, which doesn't rhyme with any other English word I know of. But maybe non-russophiles say it like "tiger", and I guess we have to have to admit such pronunciations. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:07, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Aha!, Al di là, Blah Blah Blah, bourgeois, brouhaha, cha-cha-cha, foie gras, hurrah, Kumbaya, mamá, omertà, oo-la-la, Oom-Pah-Pah, papá, patois, schwa, shah, Shangri-La, spa, ta-ta, voilà!

-- Wavelength (talk) 19:32, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

[I italicized the words (Aha!, etc.) just above and I added the end tag "</small>" to the comment just below.

-- Wavelength (talk) 21:30, 19 February 2009 (UTC)]

I've never heard of any of those words. :) -- JackofOz (talk) 21:03, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Norms of rhyme

These norms need to be better addressed in the rhyme article. There's an unspoken assumption here, summed up in a couple statements above. The first is that "plinth can never make a full rhyme with Corinth, but arguably it can with labyrinth, whose third syllable bears a secondary stress." Labyrinth has no *lexical* secondary stress, of course; its one phonemically stressed syllable is lab. However, embedded in the proper meter, the third syllable can take metrical stress. That brings us to the second statement, that orange doesn't rhyme with hinge "because the -inj isn't stressed and can't be made to." The "made to" is key: it can't take metrical stress no matter what the meter. Is this explicitly recognized somewhere that we could make reference to it? And is this why some dictionaries mark words for "secondary" stress after primary stress, as places where metrical stress may fall? (Webster's and AHD mark the -rinth for 2ary stress, Random House and the OED do not.) Should our description of rhyme state, not that the same syllable must be stressed in the words, but rather in the meter?: lábyrínth & plínth metrically, vs. lábyrinth & plínth lexically? kwami (talk) 00:17, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Before one makes a definitive decision about which English pairs of rhyming words rhyme only with each other, it is helpful to answer the following questions.

• What is the corpus of words to be used? (Increasing it can invalidate some pairs and validate others.)
• Which dialect(s) and pronunciation(s) will be used?
• Which kind of stress will be used: lexical stress or metrical stress?
• What are the guidelines for deciding which parts of two words must sound the same and which parts should sound different?
• What are all the rhyme endings in the corpus?
• Which words have which rhyme endings? (This is a sorting operation.)

Here are some more candidate pairs of rhyming words.

burnish, furnish; bumpkin, pumpkin; gullet, mullet; bullet, pullet; rapid, vapid; avid, pavid; fescue, rescue; amorous, glamorous; Finland, inland; lowland, Poland; hitherto, thitherto; thereby, whereby; therefore, wherefore; therein, wherein; thereupon, whereupon; therewith, wherewith.

Rhyming is like alphabetization in that a youngster can understand the basic principle(s), but closer scrutiny reveals many intricacies. However, they differ in that rhyming involves the ending of the pronunciation of a word, whereas alphabetization involves the beginning of the spelling of a word. -- Wavelength (talk) 18:13, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

[I added the fifth and sixth questions. -- Wavelength (talk) 20:24, 17 February 2009 (UTC)]

Just a quick remark on some of those candidate pairs (though much could be said about the earlier list, and I haven't looked systematically through those):

• burnish, furnish [Good, though there is the rare vernish, variant of varnish.]
• gullet, mullet [Good, except for rare surmullet (rhyming with gullet); and cullet]
• rapid, vapid [No, because if vapid is allowed then equally sapid ought to be also]
• avid, pavid [No: impavid, gravid; and primigravid, multigravid with secondary stress]
• amorous, glamorous [No: clamorous, unamorous, unglamorous]
• lowland, Poland [No: Roland, Rowland, and rare troland, soland; rhyming of lowland and Poland depends on dialect, for example they don't rhyme in Australian English]

• I referred to this in my comments just up above. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:45, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

• hitherto, thitherto [Good, except that some would think whitherto as common as thitherto]
• thereby, whereby [Good only if these are stressed on the first syllable, à l'américaine; in British they are not (subject to variation dependent on the context)]
• therefore, wherefore [Good only if therefor is excluded as a separate word (as in SOED, OED; but not in M-W Collegiate or W3)]
• therein, wherein (same point as for thereby, whereby)
• thereupon, whereupon (same point as for thereby, whereby)
• therewith, wherewith (same point as for thereby, whereby)

As for the general points above, I am tempted to thud a few heavy theoretical resources down on the table, and join in some serious analysis. But I will not. Basically, I agree with Kwami and Wavelength, except that I am not sure about this point of Kwami's: "Labyrinth has no *lexical* secondary stress, of course; its one phonemically stressed syllable is lab." I say that the reason the dictionaries he mentions mark a secondary stress in labyrinth is precisely that it has a secondary lexical stress, in many varieties of English. Perhaps less in British pronunciations, which lean toward turning non-stressed vowels into uniform schwas far more readily than American and even Australian pronunciations.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 11:37, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Kwami has a well known bias against secondary stress. —Angr 21:59, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Just following Ladefoged. I have yet to see a word distinguished by secondary stress. I don't think it's a dialect thing: Random House doesn't use it, Webster's does, and they're both Usonian. kwami (talk) 08:01, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, without secondary stress, I don't know how else to represent the different stress patterns of chickadee and Kennedy. For me, they're [ˈtʃɪkəˌdi] and [ˈkɛnədi]; not a minimal pair, of course, because the segments are different, but still quite distinct with respect to stress. —Angr 09:06, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that poses some difficulties. I seem to have the distinction too. It seems to be what we've been transcribing as long vs. short /i/, in the OED final /iː/ vs. final /ɪ/ (now /i/). I dunno, perhaps Ladefoged would count that as vowel reduction? It seems to be a vocalic distinction, anyway, and IMO pretty thin evidence for positing a three-way stress distinction. I do notice however that dictionaries which don't bother to mark post-tonic 2ary stress in words like battleship do mark it in chickadee, but the OED unfortunately puts the primary stress on the last syllable. It is perhaps also a remnant of stress shift: a lot of words exist in limbo somewhere between the phonemes set up for a language, like the syllabification of memory, emery, and mammary. kwami (talk) 09:40, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, the vowels certainly sound the same to me, a GenAm speaker with no contrastive vowel length. And my understanding of stress has always followed the system of Bruce Hayes's book, in which syllables are parsed into feet and feet into prosodic words, so the prosodic structures of "chickadee" and "Kennedy" are:

P-word ( × ) (× ) Foot ( × .)(×) (× .) . chicka dee Kenne dy

Somehow that doesn't strike me as particularly uneconomical, though I guess it doesn't answer the question why "dee" gets its own foot when "dy" doesn't. —Angr 09:58, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't mean that the distinction was length, only that that's how we transcribe it. There are other cases where we have reduced vowels other that schwa and schwi, such as /ɵ/, and there's a /u/ rather like our /i/. /i/ is just the most common of these. If you analyze the distinctive feature as reduction rather than stress, it isn't easy to transcribe phonemically with the IPA. I guess I wouldn't mind calling it "secondary stress" if people didn't also mark primary stress as secondary. That way it would be easy enough to discuss how they're two different phenomena. There are cases where you have chickadee-type syllables preceding the primary stress, but it's either not marked at all, or marked secondary, the same as non-final regular stress. So if you don't mark these tertiary syllables somehow, you lose some information, but if you mark them as stress, you lose other information, unless you go with a 4-way stress distinction or develop a full set of reduced vowel symbols. Something like ˈˈchickaˌdee vs. proˈnunciˈˈation would work, but that's not feasible for Wikipedia. Plus the functional load would seem to be pretty low. kwami (talk) 10:11, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

The word electricity has a variable secondary stress. Sometimes, the word is pronounced with the secondary stress on the second syllable (in conformity with electron), and sometimes it is pronounced with the secondary stress on the first syllable (for easier rhythm). -- Wavelength (talk) 22:02, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

That's the confusion I'm talking about with 2ary vs 1ary stress: it's just electrícity (first e reduced, second full) vs. électrícity (first e also stressed). Put the latter in the phrase electricity and magnetism or static electricity is formed ..., or some other environment where it does not carry final prosody, and the putative difference between 1ary and 2ary stress disappears. kwami (talk) 22:43, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

A late addition

From a limerick I wrote several years ago: purgative and ergative. They don't actually rhyme for most Scottish people and many Irish people, but for those of us for whom they do rhyme, I can't think of anything else to rhyme with them. —Angr 11:32, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't mean to be objurgative, but there is also objurgative ("scolding", "rebuking") – quite as familiar as ergative, for some.

 :)

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 11:43, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

By listing "whilom" and "asylum", they have forgotten "phylum"! And genus/Venus rhyme with lots of words: penis, intravenous, Salinas, greenness, meanness, and you could also use "between us" (or other /-in/ words followed by "us"). Wiwaxia (talk) 21:36, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Using idiomatic expressions literally

Is there a word for taking an idiomatic expression (i.e., one with a common usage completely unrelated to what the phrase literally means) and actually using it literally? For example, to say after sitting on a very uncomfortable chair, "That thing is a real pain in the ass," or upon seeing a decapitation, "Looks like he's lost his head." Or to say, "I feel like I'm beating a dead horse here," when you are, in fact, physically abusing a horse's carcass. It's common in comedy so I feel like there should be a term that specifically refers to that, but I'm not sure what it would be. Pun doesn't seem quite right... Thanks! 209.60.87.185 (talk) 17:55, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

"Overliteralness" is the fairly straightforward term I have occasionally encountered in scholarly essays on this sort of joke, e.g. in Shakespeare. But maybe there's an even better word. T.a.k. (talk) 20:45, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

The term I've come across is "overliterality", both in reference to psychiatry and comedy. I remember reading a case study about a woman with mental retardation who was particularly prone to this: Asked 'What kind of doctor is your sister?', she replied 'A woman.' In comedy, overliterality is usually considered a class of pun. For some reason James Bond is especially fond of it: 'He got the point,' Bond says, having shot Vargas with a harpoon. 'Shocking,' he says, having electrocuted a foe in a bathtub. 'He had a lot of guts,' he says, having witnessed a henchman ground up in a snowblower. And so on. It's such a signature of the Bond franchise that Austin Powers had a whole scene lampooning it: 'He didn't have a head for business... He'll never get ahead... etc.' Lantzy ^talk 01:41, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Another term is "hyperliteralism", which is usually used to describe an overly literal approach to Biblical scholarship, but which sometimes is used when describing comedy. For example, in Buster Keaton's film The Navigator, he uses a swordfish to fence against another swordfish. A reviewer describes this as visual hyperliteralism. Lantzy ^talk 01:54, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

I have to say I like that one better. Hyper- sounds descriptive while over- sounds like a condemnation. --Anonymous, 06:34 UTC, February 14, 2009.

I've read through this thread a few times, Friend 209, but the terms "overliteral" and "hyperliteral" don't really seem to apply to the case you raised. (Unless I am interpreting those words themselves too literally.) I see two quite unrelated cases. Reading the Bible and believing the world was actually created in one week, etc. - that's a case of reading things too literally. But taking an idiomatic expression that's NOT normally meant to be interpreted literally, and using it in a circumstance where it actually DOES literally apply (such as the dead horse example and the James Bond examples), that's not being any kind of overly literal. It isn't even about interpreting words - whether it be literally, overliterally, or any other way. It's about choosing an expression that is particularly suited to the circumstance because of its humorous effect. I don't know that there's a special term for this, but I'd be delighted to discover there is. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:25, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

In linguistics, we call this type of sentence a "Tom Swifty". СПУТНИК^{CCC P} 00:04, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Years ago, Mad Magazine had an occasional segment called (IIRC) "Horrifying Cliches", where the text would be something like "Harboring a grudge", and the accompanying cartoon would show a guy taking care of a monstrous creature (assumedly the "grudge"). Really, the series was better than I'm making it out to be. (oh, and I respectfully disagree that a "Tom Swifty" has anything to do with this) Bunthorne (talk) 06:07, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Who's on First? is somewhat related. -- Wavelength (talk) 19:35, 19 February 2009 (UTC)