Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds in nearby words, particularly in their final positions, without matching vowel sounds: boat/night, milk/talk, stopped/wept. It is the consonantal counterpart of assonance and, like assonance, operates as a subtler alternative to full rhyme.
Where alliteration repeats consonants at the beginnings of words, consonance repeats them anywhere — in the middle or at the end. This gives consonance a less obvious, more textural quality. It knits words together without the click of rhyme, creating a sense of sonic cohesion that operates below the surface of the poem.
Consonance is particularly useful in free verse and in slant rhyme, where the poet wants sound-binding without the formality and closure that perfect rhyme brings. Wilfred Owen’s use of consonance (often called pararhyme) — escaped/scooped, groined/groaned — demonstrated its capacity to produce unease and incompleteness, matching the subject matter of his war poetry.
Related terms
- assonance — repetition of vowel sounds
- alliteration — repetition of initial consonant sounds
- rhyme — full sound-matching that includes both vowel and consonant
- prosody — the broader study of sound in verse