Editing Rhyme (section)

===French===
<!-- This section is linked from [[Meter (poetry)]] -->

In [[French poetry]], unlike in English, it is common to have ''identical rhymes'', in which not only the vowels of the final syllables of the lines rhyme, but their onset consonants ("consonnes d'appui") as well. To the ear of someone accustomed to English verse, this often sounds like a very weak rhyme. For example, an English perfect rhyme of homophones, ''flour'' and ''flower'', would seem weak, whereas a French rhyme of homophones ''doigt'' ("finger") and ''doit'' ("must") or ''point'' ("point") and ''point'' ("not") is not only acceptable but quite common.

Rhymes are sometimes classified into the categories of "rime pauvre" ("poor rhyme"), "rime suffisante" ("sufficient rhyme"), "[[rime riche]]" ("rich rhyme") and "rime richissime" ("very rich rhyme"), according to the number of rhyming sounds in the two words or in the parts of the two verses. For example, to rhyme "tu" with "vu" would be a poor rhyme (the words have only the vowel in common), to rhyme "pas" with "bras" a sufficient rhyme (with the vowel and the silent consonant in common), and "tante" with "attente" a rich rhyme (with the vowel, the onset consonant, and the coda consonant with its mute "e" in common). Authorities disagree, however, on exactly where to place the boundaries between the categories.

Classical French rhyme not only differs from English rhyme in its different treatment of onset consonants. It also treats coda consonants in a distinctive way.

French spelling includes several final letters that are no longer pronounced and that in many cases have never been pronounced. Such final unpronounced letters continue to affect rhyme according to the rules of Classical French versification.

The most important "silent" letter is the "[[Silent letter#Vowels|mute e]]". In spoken French today, final "e" is, in some regional accents (in Paris for example), omitted<!--leads a kind of half-life: this is an abuse of the term "half-life"--> after consonants; but in Classical French prosody, it was considered an integral part of the rhyme even when following the vowel. "Joue" could rhyme with "boue", but not with "trou". Rhyming words ending with this silent "e" were said to make up a "double rhyme", while words not ending with this silent "e" made up a "single rhyme". It was a principle of stanza-formation that single and double rhymes had to alternate in the stanza. Virtually all 17th-century French plays in verse alternate masculine and feminine {{lang|fr|[[Alexandrin]]}} couplets.

The now-silent final consonants present a more complex case. They, too, were traditionally an integral part of the rhyme, such that "pont" rhymed with "vont" but not with "long". (The voicing of consonants was lost in liaison and thus ignored, so "pont" also rhymed with "rond".) There are a few rules that govern most word-final consonants in archaic French pronunciation:
* The distinction between voiced and unvoiced consonants is lost in the final position. Therefore, "d" and "t" (both pronounced /t/) rhyme. So too with "c", "g" and "q" (all /k/), and "s", "x" and "z" (all /z/). Rhymes ending in /z/ are called "plural rhymes" because most plural nouns and adjectives end in "s" or "x".
* Nasal vowels rhyme whether spelled with "m" or "n" (e.g., "essaim" rhymes with "sain").
* If a word ends in a stop consonant followed by "s", the stop is silent and ignored for purposes of rhyming (e.g., "temps" rhymes with "dents"). In the archaic orthography some of these silent stops are omitted from the spelling as well (e.g., "dens" for "dents").

====Holorime====
''[[Holorime]]''  is an extreme example of ''rime richissime'' spanning an entire verse. [[Alphonse Allais]] was a notable exponent of holorime. Here is an example of a holorime couplet from [[Marc Monnier]]:
{{Verse translation|
{{lang|fr|Gall, amant de la Reine, alla (tour magnanime)
Galamment de l'Arène à la Tour Magne, à Nîmes.}}
|
Gallus, the Queen's lover, went (a magnanimous gesture)
Gallantly from the Arena to the Great Tower, at Nîmes.}}