“Rhyme” came into English usage through an unfortunate error; now it is so widespread that many readers think the original, correct spelling is incorrect.
The most successful poetry textbook ever written is Laurence Perrine’s Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry. Professor Perrine died before the book reached its ninth edition; his successor, Professor Thomas Arp, renamed the text Perrine’s Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry. The text is now in its twelfth edition and continues to be selected for its clarity and depth in poetry instruction. Laurence Perrine used the spelling “rime” throughout his influential textbook; he was interested in accuracy.
Origin of the Term “Rhyme”
The term, “rime,” in Old English was “hrim”; in Middle English, it had become “rime” and remained so until the 19th century, when English printers misguidedly started spelling it “rhyme.” The error was encouraged by Samuel Johnson, who mistook the term as a derivative of the Greek “rhythmos.”
Shakespeare and Coleridge
In Shakespeare’s sonnets, the spelling is always “rime”; the sonnets were written two centuries before the error. The famous poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”
Rime, Not Rhyme
I prefer the spelling “rime” for two reasons: I am not comfortable perpetuating an error. And a rule of poetry, indeed all writing, requires brevity in language use: never use a long word, when a short one will do, and never use two words when one will do. The spelling, “rime,” is one letter fewer than the bulky, erroneous “rhyme.”
It is unfortunate that an error has taken hold of a perfectly good word and changed it for so many generations of readers, writers, printers, publishers, and editors. Today, the forms “rime” and “rhyme” are considered interchangeable by many editors, while most prefer and even insist on “rhyme.” Some readers even believe that the term “rime” is actually incorrect except when referring to a type of ice.
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