Rhyme

end rhyme eye rhyme internal rhyme rhyme rhyme scheme
  historical rhyme     slant rhyme

Rhyme – When two or more words have both consonance and assonance, or the same middle and end sounds, but NOT the same beginning sounds. (Note: Words that sound the same do not rhyme; they are homophones.)

Ex: Time, slime, crime, grime

End Rhyme – when words at the end of two or more lines of poetry rhyme

Internal Rhyme – when words in the same line of a poem have both consonance and assonance

Perfect rhyme - when two (or more) words have the same number of syllables and similar middle and end sounds. (time - crime; macaroni - her baloney)

Slant rhyme – A rhyme that is not perfect and has only similarity rather than identity of sound patterns (once – France; lives - is; orange - door hinge); also called imperfect, near, partial, or off rhyme.

Eye rhyme – when words are spelled similarly but pronounced differently (cough – bough – though – rough)

Historical rhyme - a rhyme from an old poem whose words were once pronounced so that they rhymed, but no longer are; eye rhymes are often historical rhymes (a frequently occurring example is rhyming "prove" with "love").- see "archaic"

Rhyme scheme – The pattern of end rhyme in a poem.  To correctly identify rhyme scheme, you need to look at the entire poem.  Rhyme scheme is identified by capital letters; the first end sound is an A, the next sound that is not similar to the first is a B, the third non-similar sound would be C, etc.

            Ex:      "Smart"  
by Shel Silverstein

My dad gave me a one-dollar bill                    A
'Cause I'm his smartest son,                             B
And I swapped it for two shiny quarters         C
'Cause two is more than one!                         B

And then I took the quarters                          C
And traded them to Lou                                 D
For three dimes - I guess he don't know       E
that three is more than two!                         D

Just then, along came old blind Bates         F
And just 'cause he can't see                         G
He gave me four nickels for my three dimes, H
And four is more than three!                       G

And I took the nickels to Hiram Coombs     I
Down at the seed-feed store,                       J
and the fool gave me five pennies for them, K
And five is more than four!                         J

And then I went and showed my dad,         L
and he got red in the cheeks                     M
And closed his eyes and shook his head-   N
Too proud of me to speak!                         M
 
When marking the rhyme scheme of a poem, continue lettering all the way to the end.  Do not start over at A when you move to a new stanza, and always remember to look back - sometimes a rhyme scheme will unexpectedly begin to repeat late in a poem.
 
If you are writing a sentence and want to indicate the rhyme scheme of a poem, simply write the letters side-by-side, leaving a space to indicate a new stanza.
Ex: The rhyme scheme of "Smart" by Shel Silverstein is  ABCB CDED FGHG IJKJ LMNM.