Midword Rhyme

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Many poems follow some sort of rhyme scheme—AABBA, ABAB etc. This is generally an end rhyme; the rhyming words come at the end of each successive line. Generally the rhyme ends up even, and each line is a complete phrase, if not a complete sentence.

And then...there are these.

If you write out the poem or lyrics in lines, they will rhyme...so long as you cut words between two lines. Or three, but that would get silly.

Tends to overlap with a Least Rhymable Word, as a way of getting around it (without "chilver" or "doorhinge").

Please note that the word has to be completed for this to work. Otherwise it's an abbreviation, a Curse Cut Short, or a Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion.

Examples of Midword Rhyme include:

Film

• In The Great Mouse Detective, Ratigan's Villain Song "The World's Greatest Criminal Mind" includes this line:

An even grimmer Plan has been simmer- —ing in my great criminal brain!

Music

• Tom Lehrer

Eating an orange While making love Makes for bizarre enj- oyment thereof.

• • Lehrer again:

When you attend a funeral It is sad to think that sooner or l- ater those you love will do the same for you... And you may have thought it tragic Not to mention other adjec- tives to think of all the weeping they will do...

• Goldentusk's With Lyrics version of the Halloween theme does this once; perhaps unnecessarily, since the running rhyme of the song is a long E sound.

His sense of life and death and good and e- vil seemed extremely rudimentary

• "The Way You Look Tonight" (originally from the film Swing Time, now a jazz standard):

Oh, but you're lovely, With your smile so warm And your cheeks so soft, There is nothing for m- e but to love you, And the way you look tonight.

• Arlo Guthrie's "Motorcycle Song" (allegedly written while falling off a cliff after trying to play an acoustic guitar while riding a motorcycle):

I don't want a pickle Just want to ride on my motor-sickle And I don't want a tickle 'Cause I'd rather ride on my motor-sickle

And I don't want to die Just want to ride on my motorcy... cle.

I knew that, it wasn't the best song l ever wrote, but I didn't have time to change it. I was comin' down mighty fast.

Radio

• In the final episode of the first series of Mitch Benn's Crimes Against Music, he and Richard Stilgoe are having a satirical song contest; when Stilgoe challenges Benn to continue the song "I went to the supermarket and there I bought an orange", Mitch melts. But he later comes back:

Everybody knows ain't nothing rhymes with orange Doesn't matter how much imagination or ing- enuity you use, even words that are foreign j- ust better let it go, ain't nothing rhymes with orange

Theater

• "In A Little While" from Once Upon a Mattress:

My time is at a premium For soon the world will see me a m- aternal bride-to-be

• Bye Bye Birdie's "Put On a Happy Face":

Wipe off that gloomy mask of tragedy It's not your style You'll look so good that you'll be glad ya de- cided to smile

• From Wicked:
  • "A Sentimental Man":

And helping you with your ascent al- —lows me to feel so parental

• • "Popular":

Don't be offended by my frank analysis Think of it as personality dialysis Now that I've chosen to become a pal, a sis- -ter and adviser There's nobody wiser

• "Ladies In Their Sensitivities" from Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street:

When a girl's emergent Probably it's urgent You differ to her gent- —tility, my Lord

• "Magic to Do" from Pippin:

Journey, journey to a spot ex- citing, mystic and exotic Journey through our anecdotic revue

• "How I saved Roosevelt" from Assassins contains a mid-letter rhyme, which when written down looks sort of like:

We'd have been left Bereft Of FD R

Western Animation

• South Park quotes a playground rhyme that combines this with some Inverted Trope Curse Cut Short. Snippet:

Miss Lucy had a steam boat The steamboat had a bell, Miss Lucy went to heaven and the Steamboat went to...Hell- o operator

South Park's version, however, is much naughtier than the original playground song. Specifically, mention is made of "cont-aminated water."

Meta

• Daniel F. Wallace

When mired in a problem's confusion, heed not to the boundary illusion. So when rhyming with orange, one has to be more inge- nious to find a solution.