Search

resemblance of sounds.
Also called vowel rhyme. Prosody. rhyme in which the same vowel sounds are used with different consonants in the stressed syllables of the rhyming words, as in penitent and reticence.
partial agreement or correspondence.
Historical Examples

For purposes of assonance little use is made of words accented on a syllable preceding the antepenult.
Legends, Tales and Poems Gustavo Adolfo Becquer

It is an example of assonance which is lost in the translation.
The Gegence; A Comedy Ballet in the Nahuatl-Spanish Dialect of Nicaragua Daniel G. Brinton

Not only is there no rhyme, but assonance is very carefully avoided.
Frdric Mistral Charles Alfred Downer

It is, we might say, a rhythm of thought, an assonance of feeling.
Music in the History of the Western Church Edward Dickinson

It has been pointed out that syke is not a perfect rime to endyte, whyte, but only an assonance.
Chaucer’s Works, Volume 2 (of 7) Geoffrey Chaucer

Yet there is an amount of assonance, which at times approaches to rhyme.
The Expositor’s Bible George Adam Smith

In the following specimen, assonance seems in some measure to take the place of rime.
English Verse Raymond MacDonald Alden, Ph.D.

In our ode there is not much either of assonance or alliteration.
The Book of Isaiah, Volume I (of 2) George Adam Smith

In the other hymn, also to the Cross, assonance and rhyme foretell the coming transformation of metre to accentual verse.
The Mediaeval Mind (Volume II of II) Henry Osborn Taylor

In words llanas or esdrjulas the assonance is of two vowels only.
Legends, Tales and Poems Gustavo Adolfo Becquer

noun
the use of the same vowel sound with different consonants or the same consonant with different vowels in successive words or stressed syllables, as in a line of verse. Examples are time and light or mystery and mastery
partial correspondence; rough similarity
n.

1727, “resemblance of sounds between words,” from French assonance, from assonant, from Latin assonantem (nominative assonans), present participle of assonare “to resound, respond to,” from ad- “to” (see ad-) + sonare “to sound” (see sonata). Properly, in prosody, “rhyming of accented vowels, but not consonants” (1823).