Consonance

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Consonance is a stylistic device, often used in poetry. It is the repetition of consonant sounds in a short sequence of words, for example, the "t" sound in "Is it blunt and flat?" Alliteration differs from consonance insofar as alliteration requires the repeated consonant sound to be at the beginning of each word, where in consonance it is anywhere within the word, although often at the end. In half rhyme, the terminal consonant sound is repeated. A special species of consonance is using a series of sibilant sounds (/s/ and /sh/ for example); this is sometimes known simply as sibilance.

Several good examples of sibilance come from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" For example: "And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain" (note that this example also contains assonance around the "ur" sound). Another example of consonance is the word 'sibilance' itself.

[edit] See also

• assonance

• alliteration
• rhyming