Holorime

Holorime (or holorhyme) is a form of identical rhyme in which the rhyme encompasses an entire line or phrase. A holorime may be a couplet or short poem made up entirely of homophonous verses.

In English

"In Ayrshire hill areas, a cruise, eh, lass?"

"Inertia, hilarious, accrues, hélas!"

—Miles Kington, "A Lowlands Holiday Ends in Enjoyable Inactivity".

"Poor old Dali loped with an amazin' raging cyst, as

poor Roald Dahl eloped with Anna-May's enraging sisters."

—the final line from an unpublished short story by translator Steven F. Smith about the attempts of Salvador Dalí and Roald Dahl to woo a pair of Americans.

In French

In French poetry, rime richissime ("very rich rhyme") is a rhyme of more than three phonemes. Holorime is an extreme example of rime richissime.

Gall, amant de la Reine, alla, tour magnanime!

Galamment de l'Arène à la Tour Magne, à Nîmes.

Gallus, the Queen's lover, went (a magnanimous gesture)

Gallantly from the Arena to the Great Tower, at Nîmes.

—Marc Monnier

A notable exponent of holorime in French was Alphonse Allais:

Par les bois du djinn, où s'entasse de l'effroi, (By the woods of the djinn, where fear abounds,)

Parle et bois du gin, ou cent tasses de lait froid. (Talk and drink gin, or a hundred cups of cold milk.)

A humorous play on words:

Ma mère est maire de Mamers, et mon frère est masseur. (My mother is the mayor of Mamers, and my brother is a masseur.)

Ma mère est mère de ma mère, et mon frère est ma soeur. (My mother is my mother's mother, and my brother is my sister.)

Other examples

Holorime may also refer to two phrases that sound the same but have different meanings. Most such holorimes come from music lyrics, such as mishearing "'Scuse me while I kiss the sky" as "'Scuse me while I kiss this guy." (See also Mondegreen)

See also

• Homophonic transformation
• Word play

External links

• Wordspy
• 'A Hollow Rhyme' - by contemporary poet Ronberge