Stave-rhyme

Pronunciation

• IPA: /steɪv.ɹaɪm/

Alternative forms

• stave rhyme
• staff-rhyme, staff rhyme

Origin

stave (in reference to the stem of a word, its onset) + rhyme, possibly a calque of a Germanic term

Full definition of stave-rhyme

Noun

1. (countable) A (stressed) word that rhymes with another, in that it begins with the same consonant, consonant cluster, or vowel.The poem is littered with stave-rhymes like "start, stop".
• 1860, George Stephens, Two leaves of king Waldere's lay, a hitherto unknown Old-English epic, page 72:It is better to retain it in this line, as it is one of the 3 stave-rhymes.
• 2001, in Altaic affinities: proceedings of the 40th meeting of the Permanent International Altaistic Conference (PIAC), Provo, Utah (1997), page 268:c) MNT I 58 stave-rhymes (har/am; qat/qa) and near stave-rhymes (qu/qa) in the first five words, twofold genuine stave-rhyme (ö & ki) with grammatical assonant end-rhyme (söl/sal & sön/san) in the parallel phrases on revenge
• 2005, György Kara, Books of the Mongolian nomads: more than eight centuries of writing Mongolian, page 277:The colophon penned in flowery style with stave-rhymes relates that the words of the Zaya Pandita's translation were written ...
2. (usually uncountable) This kind of rhyme.The poem exhibits stave-rhyme.
• 1860, George Stephens, Two leaves of king Waldere's lay, a hitherto unknown Old-English epic, page 22:Our ancestors grounded their verse on stave-rhyme and accent ...
• 1877, Daniel Henry Haigh, On Runic Inscriptions Discovered at Thornhill, published in The Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, volume 4, page 420:Now, of the Thornhill fragments, those I have numbered VII. give us part of an epitaph in stave-rhyme, conceived on the same plan as those at Dewsbury and Falstone, but with a remarkable variation; ...
• 2001, in Altaic affinities: proceedings of the 40th meeting of the Permanent International Altaistic Conference (PIAC), Provo, Utah (1997), page 268:c) MNT I 58 stave-rhymes (har/am; qat/qa) and near stave-rhymes (qu/qa) in the first five words, twofold genuine stave-rhyme (ö & ki) with grammatical assonant end-rhyme (söl/sal & sön/san) in the parallel phrases on revenge

Synonyms

• broadly speaking alliteration

Hypernyms

• rhyme

Verb

1. To exhibit this kind of rhyme.
• 1995, John M. Jeep, Alliterating word-pairs in Old High German, page 35:Richard Kienast, in a study of the prose style of the Old High German Isidor translation, remarked that the relics of elevated celebratory composition, as the ‘stave-rhyming formulas’ were described, need to be treated.
• 2002, Irmengard Rauch, Gerald F. Carr (editors), New insights in Germanic linguistics III, page 120:To find other Old High German parallels, it is necessary to include those genres which are not composed in stave-rhyming verse.

Synonyms

• broadly speaking alliterate