What Is Masculine Rhyme?
Quick answer: Masculine rhyme lands on a single stressed final syllable, as in bright and night. Learn how it differs from feminine rhyme and when each serves a poem.
Masculine rhyme is rhyme that falls on a single stressed final syllable: bright and night, defer and prefer, delay and away. The rhyme lands on the last beat of the line and stops there, with no unstressed syllable trailing after it. It is the most common rhyme in English verse, the default click you hear in ballads, hymns, sonnets and song.
The name comes from French prosody, where words with a silent final e were classed as feminine and words without one as masculine, and it says nothing about the poet or the subject. English kept the labels for the two basic rhyme endings: masculine for the stressed single syllable, feminine for a stressed rhyming syllable followed by a matching unstressed one, as in motion and ocean. Some handbooks now prefer single rhyme and double rhyme, which mean the same things.
The poem
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
Robert Frost, 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening' (1923)
Stress Decides Everything
Rhyme in English is a stress phenomenon. Two words rhyme when their final stressed vowels, and everything after them, match: light and delight rhyme because the stressed syllables chime, even though one word carries an extra syllable in front. Masculine rhyme is simply the case where that matching stressed syllable is also the last syllable, so the line ends on the beat: cat and hat, guitar and afar, delay and away.
This is why longer words can rhyme masculinely. Prefer and defer end on stressed syllables, so the pairing lands with the same click as monosyllables. What breaks the effect is rhyming on an unstressed syllable, matching sing with ending, say, so the chime falls where nobody's voice does. Prosodists call the worst version of this wrenched rhyme, and readers hear it as a stumble.
Masculine and Feminine, Side by Side
Feminine rhyme matches a stressed syllable plus one or more identical unstressed syllables after it: motion and ocean, bending and ending, weather and together. The line ends on a falling note, the voice stepping down after the beat. Add a second trailing syllable, tenderly and slenderly, and you have triple rhyme, which almost cannot help being funny.
The labels describe syllables, not people, and centuries of use have kept them purely technical. Byron understood the comic physics of the falling ending better than anyone: in Don Juan he rhymes 'ladies intellectual' with 'hen-peck'd you all', a triple rhyme engineered so the stanza collapses into laughter exactly on schedule.
The Sound of Finality
Masculine rhyme is the sound of things ending on purpose. Because the chime and the final beat arrive together, the line closes like a latch, which is why hymns, ballads, epigrams and song choruses lean on it so heavily. It gives even a whispering poem an audible spine.
Every rhyme in Frost's poem is masculine, and its famous stillness owes a great deal to those soft, firm clicks: know, though, snow, each line shutting gently behind the reader like a door in a sleeping house.
When Feminine Rhyme Wins
Choose feminine rhyme when you want the line to fall away rather than land. Comic verse has always known this: Gilbert's patter songs rhyme mineral with general and get a laugh from the tumble of unstressed syllables alone. The falling ending also suits unease, a line that cannot quite settle, and it loosens stanzas that masculine rhyme would nail too tightly shut.
Most rhymed poems mix the endings, and the mixing is itself expressive. A stanza of falling endings resolved by one masculine rhyme closes like a chord finding its root. Reverse the pattern and the poem ends on a held breath instead.
A Worked Example
Here is the same small scene twice, first with masculine rhymes: 'The gate swung shut, the garden slept, / the path remembered where I stepped.' The endings land on the beat and the moment feels finished, filed away, almost curt.
Now with feminine rhymes: 'The gate swung shut with slow complaining, / the garden settled into raining.' Nothing about the scene changed except the endings, yet the second version trails off, wistful and unresolved, because the voice steps down after each final stress. That difference, multiplied across a whole poem, is a large part of what readers vaguely call tone.
Beyond the Two Labels
The pair does not cover everything. Triple rhyme extends the falling ending by another syllable. Broken rhyme splits a word across a line-end to complete a match, a trick shared by Hopkins and comic versifiers. Eye rhyme, love and move, matches spelling rather than sound, and slant rhyme lets the vowels disagree while the consonants shake hands.
Because the gendered labels strike some writers as dated, you will also meet single and double rhyme, or rising and falling rhyme, naming the same two endings. Use whichever vocabulary you like; the craft point is only this: know where the stress falls in your last word, because the reader's ear already does.
What poets can take from this
- Check where the stress falls in every rhyme word; a rhyme on an unstressed syllable always sounds forced.
- Use masculine rhyme for closure: final lines, refrains, epigrams, verdicts.
- Use feminine rhyme when you want a line to fall away, hesitate or joke.
- Mix the two endings across a stanza to keep the music from flattening.
- Never wrench a word's natural stress to force a rhyme; readers hear the injury instantly.
- Read your rhyme words alone, as a bare list; they should almost tell the poem's story.
Try it yourself
Write two quatrains describing the same closed door: the first using only masculine rhymes, the second only feminine rhymes, and let the endings change the mood.
Questions
Why is it called masculine rhyme?
The label comes from French grammar and prosody, where words with a silent final e were classed as feminine and words ending on a sounded, stressed syllable as masculine. English borrowed the pair for rhyme endings centuries ago. It says nothing about gender or subject matter, and many writers now prefer the terms single and double rhyme.
Is masculine rhyme better than feminine rhyme?
Neither is better; they do different jobs. Masculine rhyme closes a line with a click, which suits endings, refrains and epigrams. Feminine rhyme lets the line fall away, which suits comedy, unease and songlike movement. Strong rhymers mix the two deliberately.
What is feminine rhyme?
Feminine rhyme matches a stressed syllable and then one or more identical unstressed syllables after it, as in motion and ocean or bending and ending. When two unstressed syllables follow, as in tenderly and slenderly, it is usually called triple rhyme. The rhyme starts on the stress and carries through to the end of the word.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated September 2026.
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