assonance

noun [ˈæsənəns]

pronunciation

Editorial team; lemma absent from CMUdict (pipeline/ipa-en.mjs: assonance BRAK); stress from Webster As"so*nance; confirm with a phonetician; no frequency figure, open source

Assonance names mid-word vowel echo in a word row; alliteration foils the head sound, anaphora and epiphora foil the lexeme, rhyme foils the ending.

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Definitions

ling. / rhet. / lit. Rhetorical figure: deliberate reuse of one mid-word vowel across successive words to keep rhythm and sonic cohesion. Axis sits at that shared vowel. Alliteration joins the head sound. Anaphora and epiphora fasten clause members with one lexeme. Rhyme joins endings. Accidental vowel coincidence is not the same axis.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
hist. lex. Arct 1921 opens Asonancja: mid-word vowel repeat in verse; incomplete rhyme. Brückner 1927 skips asonan*. Webster 1913 keeps ASSONANCE and ASSONANT. Skeat 1910 leads ASSONANT from Spanish and Latin (Der. assonance).

source
Editorial team; facts: M. Arct 1921 (Asonancja); A. Brückner 1927 (no asonan*); Webster 1913 (ASSONANCE; ASSONANT); W. W. Skeat 1910 (ASSONANT; Der. assonance), open source
didact. / rhet. In class, assonance keeps vowel rhythm beside alliteration, anaphora, epiphora, rhyme, antithesis, oxymoron, irony, hyperbole, and simile. Borders among vowel echo, head-sound echo, lexeme echo, and ending echo need review.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
colloq. Loose talk may dump every vowel clash under this tag. This card keeps one axis: purposeful mid-word vowel echo across a word row. Foils: alliteration, anaphora, epiphora, rhyme. Apart from accidental letter coincidence.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Examples

A verse that reuses one mid-word vowel yields assonance; shared head sound in wild winds whip white waves is already alliteration, not this card.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
Morning drill ran on vowel echo; alliteration came back as the head-sound foil, anaphora as the opening-lexeme foil, epiphora as the closing foil.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
Source shelf: Arct Asonancja (1921), Webster ASSONANCE (1913) beside ASSONANT, Skeat 1910 (ASSONANT, Der. assonance), Brückner with no asonan* lemma.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
A worksheet that stamped every vowel clash as assonance erased the split between a deliberate row and accidental letter coincidence.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
Board labels: assonance | alliteration | anaphora | epiphora | rhyme | clash without a figure, keeping vowel apart from head sound, lexeme, ending, and loose coincidence.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Usage

Casual notes may brand any clash of vowels as assonance with no named axis. Seminar peels the stack: deliberate mid-word vowel echo; alliteration as the head-sound foil; anaphora and epiphora as lexeme foils; rhyme as the ending foil; plus lexicon notes. Arct keeps Asonancja on the mid-word vowel and incomplete rhyme. Webster keeps ASSONANCE on sound likeness and a special vowel rhyme. Skeat traces Latin ad + sonare / sonus through Spanish. Brückner skips asonan*. Without those layers only a hollow slogan about vowel clash remains.

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Open-book record. In Arct (1921) Asonancja marks the same mid-word vowel repeating in verse and an incomplete rhyme (OCR samples damaged). Webster 1913: ASSONANCE, stress As"so*nance; resemblance of sound; Prosody: last accented vowel and following vowels match while consonants differ (calamo / platano, baby / chary); incomplete correspondence; ASSONANT apart. Skeat 1910: ASSONANT (Span. from L.); vowel-sound correspondence only; L. assonare (ad + sonare from sonus); Der. assonance. Brückner 1927 leaves the Polish lemma blank. Derivation under etymology.

source

Editorial team; facts: M. Arct 1921 (Asonancja); Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 (ASSONANCE; ASSONANT); W. W. Skeat 1910 (ASSONANT; Der. assonance); A. Brückner 1927 (no lemma), open source

Scholarly English marks mid-word vowel reuse across successive words for clarity and rhythm. Careful editors discard worksheets that treat every alliteration as assonance and discard glosses that never name the vowel axis. The assonance / alliteration / anaphora / epiphora / rhyme border stays debated in seminars. Chronology of the label stays blank until a primary page is cited. Polish counterpart: asonancja (SGJP present).

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Classrooms revisit vowel-echo talk among tropes and place assonance next to alliteration, anaphora, epiphora, antithesis, oxymoron, irony, euphemism, hyperbole, litotes, simile, metaphor, allegory, personification, metonymy, synecdoche, rhetoric, and semantics. CMUdict lacks assonance (editorial IPA). Polish asonancja sits in SGJP. Live neighbours include those tropes. Without the vowel axis the label collapses.

source

Editorial team; facts: Webster 1913 (ASSONANCE); CMUdict (assonance absent); SGJP / Morfeusz 2 (asonancja present), open source

Word forms

Countable noun: singular assonance / plural assonances (editorial regular plural; Webster indexes the singular under ASSONANCE). Nearby Webster form: assonant (adj.). CMUdict lemma absent.

forms in use

przypadek	forma
singular	assonance
plural	assonances (editorial regular plural)
related adjective (Webster)	assonant (Webster ASSONANT)
foil neighbour (Webster)	alliteration (Webster ALLITERATION)

Word forms: Editorial team; facts: Webster 1913 (ASSONANCE; ASSONANT; ALLITERATION); CMUdict (assonance absent) · source

Collocations

literary assonance

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
assonance against alliteration

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
mid-word vowel reuse

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
rhetorical assonance

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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
distinguish assonance from rhyme

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Synonyms · Antonyms

Synonyms asonancja (Polish counterpart; SGJP present; Arct Asonancja; check scope at review), vowel-sound match (loose descriptive neighbour; Skeat ASSONANT; Webster ASSONANCE; check scope at review), mid-word vowel reuse (approximation; Arct Asonancja; Webster ASSONANCE Pros.; check scope at review), incomplete rhyme (approximation; Arct Asonancja; Webster ASSONANCE Pros.; check scope at review)

source

Editorial team; facts: SGJP / Morfeusz 2 (asonancja present); M. Arct 1921 (Asonancja), open source

Antonyms plain narration without vowel echo (contrast: no shared mid-word vowel; check scope at review), alliteration (axis contrast: shared sound at word starts, not mid-word vowel; Webster ALLITERATION; not a clean antonym of the label alone), anaphora (axis contrast: shared lexeme at openings, not mid-word vowel; Webster ANAPHORA Rhet.; check at review)

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Etymology

English assonance rests on Webster's ASSONANCE card: resemblance of sound; Prosody marks a special vowel rhyme whose final stressed vowel and the vowels after it match while consonants stay unlike; incomplete correspondence sits nearby; the neighbouring card is ASSONANT. Skeat 1910 treats ASSONANT as Spanish from Latin (assonare: ad + sonare from sonus) and lists Der. assonance for vowel-sound correspondence only, marked in Spanish poetry. Arct 1921 indexes Asonancja. Brückner 1927 does not index asonan*. We avoid copying dictionary wording. Polish counterpart: asonancja.

source

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 (ASSONANCE; ASSONANT), open source

also

W. W. Skeat, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed., Oxford 1910 (ASSONANT; Der. assonance), open source

also

M. Arct, Słownik wyrazów obcych, 9th ed., Warsaw 1921 (Asonancja), open source

also

A. Brückner, Słownik etymologiczny języka polskiego, Kraków 1927 (no asonan* lemma), open source

Related words

alliteration , axis foil (head sound, not mid-word vowel); EN pair already live
anaphora , axis foil (shared lexeme at openings, not mid-word vowel); EN pair already live
epiphora , axis foil (shared lexeme at closings, not mid-word vowel); EN pair already live
antithesis , trope neighbour (opposing members); EN pair already live
oxymoron , trope neighbour; EN pair already live
irony , trope neighbour; EN pair already live
hyperbole , foil along the scale axis (overstatement); EN pair already live
litotes , trope neighbour (understatement); EN pair already live
simile , foil along the likeness axis (open pairing with like / as); EN pair already live
metaphor , trope neighbour (transfer); EN pair already live
allegory , foil along the construct axis (image chain); EN pair already live
personification , trope neighbour; EN pair already live
euphemism , trope neighbour (etiquette softening); EN pair already live
metonymy , trope neighbour (contiguity transfer); EN pair already live
synecdoche , trope neighbour (part for whole); EN pair already live
rhetoric , domain of tropes; EN pair already live
semantics , sense and reference neighbour; EN pair already live
asonancja , Polish counterpart (SGJP present; Webster ASSONANCE)

Related entries

The same entry in Polish: asonancja

Questions and answers

What does assonance mean?

It names a figure whose shared vowel returns mid-word across successive words. Alliteration joins a row with a head sound. Anaphora and epiphora fasten a chain with one lexeme. Rhyme joins endings. Loose vowel coincidence without a figure does not replace this card.

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

How does assonance differ from alliteration?

Assonance keeps one mid-word vowel across successive words. Alliteration (Webster ALLITERATION) keeps one sound at word starts. Vowel axis and head-sound axis differ; casual speech and school shortcuts blur the labels often.

source

Editorial team; facts: Webster 1913 (ASSONANCE; ALLITERATION); M. Arct 1921 (Asonancja), open source

How does assonance differ from anaphora, epiphora, and rhyme?

Under assonance the shared vowel sits mid-word. Anaphora (Webster ANAPHORA Rhet.) places a shared lexeme at openings. Epiphora (Webster EPIPHORA Rhet.) places it at closings. Rhyme binds endings. Axis foil: vowel versus lexeme versus ending, not a synonym of the label alone.

source

Editorial team; facts: Webster 1913 (ASSONANCE; ANAPHORA; EPIPHORA), open source

Where does the word assonance come from, and what forms sit with it?

Webster 1913 ties ASSONANCE to sound likeness and a special vowel rhyme; ASSONANT sits nearby. Skeat 1910: ASSONANT (Span. from L.; Der. assonance; L. assonare: ad + sonare from sonus). Arct 1921: Asonancja. Brückner 1927: no lemma. Forms: assonance / assonances (editorial). IPA editorial: /ˈæsənəns/ (CMUdict absent). Polish pair: asonancja (SGJP present).

source

Editorial team; facts: Webster 1913; CMUdict (assonance absent); SGJP / Morfeusz 2 (asonancja present), open source

Is assonance just another word for accidental vowel clash?

No. Accidental vowel clash can be any coincidence without a figure. Assonance holds a deliberate mid-word vowel pattern across a word row. Without that axis the label collapses into alliteration talk, anaphora talk, or rhyme talk.

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)