Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by kazinator 1160 days ago
I feel this is cheap because we can combine any word with an "agons" suffix to get a rhyme.

Low substance commentagons

---Dang!

You're shadowbanagons

Pretty soon completely gones
2 comments
avestura 1160 days ago
I think you missed the actual rhyme: "rest" and "best".
link
TomK32 1160 days ago
the sun settles onto westagons.
link
ksenzee 1160 days ago
No, it only works for words that sound vaguely like "hex". You need the short e sound and preferably a consonant cluster with an s in it.
link
kazinator 1158 days ago
While that extended pattern is nice, rhyme doesn't require three syllables. Don't forget that "cat" rhymes with "hat" just fine.
link
redsaz 1158 days ago
It's not the syllable count that matters, it's that anytime you have words with common endings, or words with unnecessarily added endings (like we're doing here), the root words need to rhyme as well as the endings.

Example: -er words. You can rhyme "teacher" with "reacher", but not with "plumber", even though all three have the same endings, technically.

Why that is, I do not know.

link
ksenzee 1158 days ago
It has to do with which syllable is stressed. The last stressed syllable in the word (or in the line of poetry), and everything after it, has to be the same. So the "-eacher" in "teacher" and "reacher" are identical, and it's a good rhyme. To rhyme with "hex", the word has to end in "-ex." You can fudge the consonants after the stressed vowel just a bit, and get something that's not quite a rhyme, but good enough for, say, a HN comment. But you can't fudge the stressed vowel at all.
link
kazinator 1157 days ago
> But you can't fudge the stressed vowel at all.

Sure you can; e.g. you can get away with matching "teacher" with "catcher".

  My good old sixth grade teacher
  Though not always eye to eye
  Introduced me to the Catcher
  You know, In The Rye
link
ksenzee 1157 days ago
What I was describing (where the last stressed vowel matches but the rest doesn't all match) is called assonance. This isn't even assonance, much less a rhyme. If you have a source describing this kind of not-a-rhyme from any period of English versification, I'd be interested to see it.
link
kazinator 1158 days ago
> the root words need to rhyme

Maybe in some $15,000 per year kindergarten in Beverly Hills; there is no such rule elsewhere.

link