by Moe Zilla

Created on: February 09, 2008   Last Updated: January 08, 2009

Is "orange" the only word without a rhyme? Yes and no. The real answer is actually much trickier...

I remember five rhymes appearing in an internet newsgroup over 11 years ago. (For example, "When he's pelted with an orange, my friend Mike sounds like a door hinge...!") This proved that it was possible to create "near rhymes" for any of these words if a looser rhyming scheme was allowed. After all, "orange" contains two shorter sounds that are easy to rhyme, "or" and "inge."

There are also three other words without a rhyme, some people argue: the words "purple," "silver," and "month." Again, it depends on whether the words need to rhyme exactly. While the word "hurtful" is not a very good rhyme for "purple," it might be acceptable in certain circumstances.

But even then there's more than four words without a rhyme, if a strict rhyming scheme is required. For example, "bachelor" almost rhymes with "spatula," but a strict rhyme would require a three-syllable rhyme containing both a "ch" in the middle and an "or" at its end. Following this rule, there's many more words without a perfect rhyme.

Almond, angst, aspirin, breadth, cannabis, chocolate, chimney, depth, different, elbow, engine, film, foible, fugue, galaxy, golf, hostage, iron, justice, luggage, neutron, office, olive, pizza, plankton, sanction, sandwich, transfer, width, and wolf.

Ironically, this rules means new problems for poets trying to replace the word "orange" with a different word like "citrus," since this strict rhyming scheme means there's also no word which rhymes with "citrus!"

A web page on Wikipedia has collected over 60 words which strictly speaking have no perfect rhyme, although the page also notes that some rhymes can be found using obscure or archaic words. For example, an old Scottish word "hurple" means to hobble while lame, and offers a perfect match for the word "purple."

And there is a perfect rhyme for the word "orange," if you use the right dictionary. Both Webster's Third Unabridged and the comprehensive Oxford English Dictionary include an entry for the word "sporange," an obscure term used only by botanists.

These technicalities only interfere with the fun of this startling linguistic truth. In conversational English, there are a lot of unique words that just don't rhyme with anything. But yes, the list includes the most famous non-rhyming word of all.

"Orange."

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