About RhymeHamster
I’m Jeremy Desmon, a musical theatre bookwriter and lyricist. For twenty years I’ve taught a writing workshop at Princeton, focused on musicals and songwriting. RhymeHamster began as a tool I built for myself, and my students liked it so much that I opened it up to everyone.
Perfect rhymes, checked by ear
A perfect rhyme on RhymeHamster is a perfect rhyme. Each one has been listened to, not just matched by a formula.
Slant rhymes on a dial
Sometimes a near miss is exactly what a line needs. Drag the dial and slant rhymes join the list in italics. Leave it alone and they stay out of your way.
A stash that earns its place
About 130,000 words, and every one had to earn its spot. That includes ten thousand modern words, phrases, names, places and brands, from emoji to Netflix to Taj Mahal. The most common words show in bold, so the strongest rhymes are easy to spot.
More ways to find a rhyme
Internal Rhymes hiding inside longer words. Wildcard Rhymes for a sound you only half remember. Stretch Rhymes for deliberate near misses that still sing. Homograph Pairs for words like wind and tear: one spelling, two sounds, a button for each.
Meet Simon
You’ll spot him around the site, peeking over the footer, popping up with a comment and hosting the daily word games.
On paper, Simon reports to me. In practice, I take dictation. He signs off on every rhyme, takes long breaks on his wheel and expenses a suspicious amount of sunflower seeds.
The pronunciations start with the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary from Carnegie Mellon University, then get corrected by ear. The word lists draw on SCOWL (by Kevin Atkinson) and WordNet (from Princeton University). Word frequency data comes from Peter Norvig’s word counts. We’re grateful to all four.
Their copyright and license notices are reproduced in full in licenses.txt.
Missing a word? Think a rhyme is wrong? Just want to say hi? I read everything.
For business or anything personal, I’m at [email protected]. Journalists, the press kit has what you need.