Apocopated Rhyme
Quick answer: Apocopated rhyme drops the final syllable of one word so it rhymes with a shorter one, pairing gate with waiting. Learn how this clipped rhyme works.
Apocopated rhyme is a near rhyme in which the final unstressed syllable of one word is ignored so that its stressed syllable can rhyme with a shorter word: 'gate' with 'waiting', 'bend' with 'ending', 'star' with 'starless'. The name comes from apocope, the cutting off of a word's ending, and that is the operation the ear performs: it clips the longer word and hears the rhyme hiding inside it.
The device lives on the border between rhyme and echo. Because one word trails an extra syllable, the pair never locks shut the way a full rhyme does; the chime lands and then keeps walking. Poets use it to loosen formal schemes, to rhyme across uneven line lengths, and to get rhyme's binding force without its click of finality.
How It Works
The stressed syllables rhyme perfectly; the mismatch is all in the tail. An invented quatrain: 'The dog barks once at the closing gate, / then circles, settles, stays there waiting. / We eat our supper, small and late, / and talk of nothing worth debating.' Lines one and three rhyme fully; lines two and four rhyme fully; but across the pairs, 'gate' also chimes into 'waiting' and 'late' into 'debating', the clipped echoes braiding the stanza tighter than the scheme alone would.
Order changes the effect. Shorter word first, and the longer word seems to extend the rhyme, an opening-out; longer word first, and the shorter one arrives as a truncation, a door left ajar and then quietly shut.
Where You Will See It
Apocopated rhyme is a connoisseur's term, more often used in analysis than claimed by poets, but the practice is widespread. Emily Dickinson's off-rhymes sometimes work this way, a stressed syllable chiming into a longer word's interior. Ballads and folk song, always casual about tails of words, use it freely, as does nursery rhyme. Twentieth-century formalists loosening their schemes, from Auden onward, let clipped rhymes stand where exact ones would sound too neat, and songwriters use the device constantly because melody can stretch or swallow a final syllable.
You will also meet its mirror image: some prosodists note the reverse pairing under the same heading, since the ear performs the identical trim either way.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Use apocopated rhyme when full rhyme feels too resolved but you still want the lines bound. It is especially handy in alternating masculine and feminine endings: rhyming 'bend' with 'ending' lets a firm line and a falling line answer each other without matching mechanically. Keep the stressed syllables exact; the licence is all in the tail, and if the stressed vowels drift too, the effect collapses into vagueness.
As with all near rhymes, consistency signals intent. A scheme that clips its rhymes throughout reads as a made thing; a single clipped rhyme in a strict poem reads as a slip unless the moment justifies it.
What poets can take from this
- Keep the stressed syllables in perfect rhyme; only the unstressed tail should differ.
- Place the longer word second when you want the rhyme to open outward rather than clip shut.
- Use apocopated pairs to marry masculine and feminine line endings in one scheme.
- Be consistent: clip rhymes throughout a poem, or clearly at patterned positions, so the choice reads as design.
- Test pairs aloud; if the trailing syllable buries the chime completely, choose a lighter tail like -ing or -er.
Try it yourself
Write a 12-line poem about waiting for news, rhyming in pairs where every second rhyme is apocopated: match a one-syllable word to a two-syllable word whose first syllable rhymes with it (late/waiting, phone/lonely). Let the trailing syllables mimic the feeling of time dragging on.
Questions
What is the difference between apocopated rhyme and feminine rhyme?
Feminine rhyme matches both the stressed syllable and the unstressed tail on both words (waiting/hating). Apocopated rhyme pairs a word that has a tail with one that does not (waiting/gate), so the rhyme is complete on one side and clipped on the other.
Is apocopated rhyme considered a true rhyme?
It is classed among near or imperfect rhymes, since the words do not match from the stressed vowel to their very ends. But because the stressed syllables rhyme exactly, it sounds closer to full rhyme than most slant rhymes do.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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