Rhyme Generator
Perfect, near and slant rhymes for any word, grouped by syllable count.
Free, no account. The dictionary downloads once to your browser, then every search runs on your device. Pronunciations: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, © Carnegie Mellon University, BSD licence.
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How to find a rhyme for any word
To find rhymes, type a word above and press Find rhymes. The tool looks up how the word is pronounced and returns three lists. Perfect rhymes have the same sound from the last stressed vowel to the end, like light and night. Near rhymes keep the vowel and end on the same kind of consonant, like time and line. Slant rhymes keep only the vowel sound, like time and mind, and are widely used in modern songwriting. Each list is grouped by number of syllables, so you can find a two-syllable match for a two-syllable line ending. It matches sounds, not spellings, so words like through and blue are found even though they look nothing alike.
Perfect, near and slant rhymes: which to reach for
A perfect rhyme is the safe choice and it has a cost. When both words land exactly, the line closes with a click that the listener hears coming. That is ideal at the end of a chorus, where you want the line to feel inevitable, and it is what makes a hook memorable. Overused in verses, it turns the lyric into a greeting card.
Near rhymes keep the vowel and change the ending to something of the same kind: time and line, both ending in a nasal; cat and cab, both ending in a stop. The ear accepts the pair as related without hearing a hard click, which is why they are the workhorse of modern writing.
Slant rhymes go further and keep only the vowel: time and mind, home and stone. They are the loosest match and the most useful when meaning matters more than sound. Hip-hop leans on them heavily, and so does a lot of indie and folk writing, because they let a line say what it needs to say.
A practical approach: use perfect rhymes where the line is carrying the hook, near rhymes in verses, and slant rhymes when the perfect rhyme would force a word that does not mean what you want.
Rhyme beyond the line ending
Most rhyme guidance stops at the last word of a line, but songs use rhyme in three other places. Internal rhyme puts a rhyming word in the middle of a line ("I'm bound to fall, I hear the call"), and it is what gives dense, fast writing its momentum. Multisyllabic rhyme matches several syllables in a row, so that "get it on" lands against "let it run"; that is why the syllable groups in the results matter, since a two- or three-syllable match is what multisyllabic rhyme is built from.
The third is the rhyme scheme, the pattern of rhymes across lines. AABB couplets are the most obvious and the easiest to sing; ABAB alternates, which holds attention a little longer; ABCB rhymes only the second and fourth lines and is the standard for folk and country, because it asks less of the writer and sounds more conversational.
Whatever pattern you choose, say the lines out loud with the melody before you commit. A rhyme that looks right on the page sometimes lands on the wrong beat, and the quickest way to find that out is to sing it.
Getting more out of a long list
The dictionary includes rare words, so the shorter, more common matches tend to appear first within each group. Scan the one- and two-syllable lists for the obvious candidates, then look further down for the unexpected word; a surprising rhyme that makes sense is worth more than a predictable one.
If you are still looking for a title, the song title generator can give you a phrase to start from, and the chord progression generator will give you the chords to sing it over. The song structure planner shows how many bars each verse and chorus has, which tells you how many lines you need to write.
What this tool does not do
It does not suggest meaning. It knows how words sound, not what they are about, so it will happily offer a rhyme that makes no sense in your line. It also uses American English pronunciations; some pairs rhyme in a British, Irish or Australian accent that do not here (and the reverse). And it matches single words, so a phrase is searched by its last word.
Frequently asked questions
What is a perfect rhyme?
Two words whose sounds match from the last stressed vowel onwards, while the sound before that vowel differs. Cat and hat rhyme perfectly; so do fighting and writing, because the stressed syllable and everything after it match. Words that sound identical, like write and right, are homophones rather than rhymes.
What is a slant rhyme, and is it cheating?
A slant rhyme (also called a near, half or imperfect rhyme) matches some of the sounds but not all of them. It is not cheating: it is how a lot of the best lyrics are written. Perfect rhymes can feel sing-song and boxed in, and slant rhymes let you keep the meaning you want while still giving the ear a pattern to follow.
Why does it group results by syllables?
Because line endings have a rhythm. If your line ends on a two-syllable word like lonely, a one-syllable rhyme will change the stress pattern. Grouping by syllable count lets you pick a match that fits the beat instead of scanning one long list.
Where does the rhyme data come from?
From the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, a free machine-readable list of how about 130,000 English words are pronounced, produced at Carnegie Mellon University and released under a permissive BSD licence. This page uses a 117,000-word subset of plain alphabetic words, grouped by ending sound. The licence notice is kept with the data and shown at the bottom of the tool.
Why can't it find my word?
The dictionary is built from standard American English pronunciations, so brand names, new slang, names and words from other languages are often missing. When a word is unknown, the tool falls back to matching by spelling and tells you that it has done so. Spelling is a weaker guide than sound, so treat those results as ideas to test by ear.
Is anything sent to a server?
The dictionary file downloads to your browser once, the first time you search. After that every search is computed on your device. The word you type is not sent anywhere, and there is no account or usage limit.
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