List of English words without rhymes

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The following is a list of English words without rhymes, i.e. a list of words in the English language which rhyme with no other English words in the sense that they are pronounced in the same way from the vowel sound of the main stressed syllable onwards.

It is sometimes said that the words orange, purple, and silver are the only words which rhyme with no other words. However, the following words have been cited as possible rhymes: sporange (an alternate form of the word 'sporangium'), curple (another name for the buttocks; in Scottish, the word for the hindquarters of a horse), hirple (meaning to walk lamely or to hobble), chilver (the Oxford English Dictionary lists chilver as an Old English noun meaning a ewe lamb, often referred to as a 'chilver lamb', and cites uses as recent as 1883). But there is much debate about some of these words. Some question whether archaic words, or Scottish and dialectal words such as hirple should be counted. More significantly, it is questionable whether the pronunciation of sporange truly rhymes with orange, since the only pronunciation listed in the Oxford English Dictionary is “spuh-RANDJ” (with the accent on the second syllable).

If we strictly follow the definition of rhyme above, demanding the exact match of all sounds from the vowel of the stressed syllable onwards, there are many longer words that have no perfect match. For instance, discombobulate. There are, however, many words that match most of the sounds from the stressed vowel onwards and so are very usable "near rhymes". Thus ovulate, copulate and populate, varying only slightly in one sound, provide very good near rhymes for discombobulate, though none are perfect rhymes.

Below is an alphabetical list of English words which may have no rhymes.