Word Report
The Hardest Words to Rhyme in English
Everyone knows nothing rhymes with orange — but orange is far from alone. Dozens of everyday English words have no perfect rhyme at all. Here they are, grouped by why they're stuck, with the closest slant rhymes our engine can find for each.
Why some words can't be rhymed
A perfect rhyme needs another word that matches from the stressed vowel to the end (cat / hat, nation / vacation). A word becomes unrhymable when its ending is simply unique in English — an unusual consonant cluster (-nth, -lb, -lf), a stress pattern no other word shares, or a vowel-plus-ending combination that appears in only one word. When there's no perfect match, the next best thing is a slant rhyme — a near miss that shares most, but not all, of the sound.
The famous unrhymables
The most famous one. No perfect rhyme exists — the closest the engine finds are near rhymes on the “-nge” ending.
Closest slant rhymes: grunge, runge, challenge, sponge
A perennial puzzle for poets. Only rare or obscure rhymes exist; there's no common word that rhymes cleanly.
Closest slant rhymes: over, however, server, never
Another colour with no true match. Its closest cousins share only the soft “-le” ending.
Closest slant rhymes: people, example, simple, sample
The “-nth” ending is a dead end — shared only by ordinals like seventh and eleventh.
Closest slant rhymes: seventh, eleventh, corinth, millionth
Numbers & ordinals: the rhyme trap
Ordinals end in clusters (-nth, -fth, -xth) that almost nothing else shares — which is why counting words are a songwriter's nightmare.
One-syllable stumpers
Short words with odd endings. A few (bulb, film, wolf) rhyme only with compounds of themselves — lightbulb, microfilm, werewolf.
- Waspno perfect rhymes · not even a slant rhyme
- Pintno perfect rhymes · not even a slant rhyme
- Depthno perfect rhymes · not even a slant rhyme
- Breadthno perfect rhymes · not even a slant rhyme
- Widthno perfect rhymes · closest: bandwidth
- Scarceno perfect rhymes · not even a slant rhyme
- Bulbno perfect rhymes · closest: lightbulb, flashbulb
- Filmno perfect rhymes · closest: microfilm, lucasfilm
- Wolf5 rare rhymes · closest: werewolf, beowulf, steppenwolf, seawolf
- Gulf2 rare rhymes · closest: metcalfe, dewulf
Longer words with no perfect rhyme
It isn't just short words — plenty of common multi-syllable words are orphans too.
- Penguinno perfect rhymes · closest: one, someone, anyone, everyone
- Walrusno perfect rhymes · closest: congress, virus, cyprus, morris
- Elephantno perfect rhymes · closest: infant, triumphant, oliphant, management
- Monsterno perfect rhymes · closest: westminster, register, master, mr
- Husbandno perfect rhymes · closest: bund, broderbund, moribund, bunde
- Chimneyno perfect rhymes · closest: any, company, many, money
- Dangerousno perfect rhymes · closest: numerous, generous, rigorous, humorous
- Rhythmno perfect rhymes · closest: algorithm, logarithm, fathom, from
- Engineno perfect rhymes · closest: region, jun, religion, origin
- Oliveno perfect rhymes · closest: love, glove, strangelove, foxglove
- Liquidno perfect rhymes · closest: languid, added, listed, limited
- Secretno perfect rhymes · closest: spirit, portrait, merit, interpret
- Nothingno perfect rhymes · closest: something, thing, everything, anything
- Emptyno perfect rhymes · closest: city, t, university, community
- Angel2 rare rhymes · closest: nigel, fragile, people, available
- Opus1 rare rhyme · closest: purpose, campus, olympus, corpus
- Woman1 rare rhyme · closest: women, human, common, german
Stuck on a word of your own? Our engine finds perfect and slant rhymes for any word.
Try the rhyme finder →Methodology
“Perfect rhyme” counts come from the Carnegie Mellon Pronouncing Dictionary (~92,000 words), matching each word's sound from its stressed vowel onward. A word is listed here when it has no common perfect rhyme; obscure entries and proper nouns are excluded. “Slant rhymes” are the closest near-misses our engine finds, ranked by how much of the sound they share.
Cite this
Free to reference with a link back. Suggested citation:
“The Hardest Words to Rhyme in English,” RhymesWith.org, https://rhymeswith.org/hardest-words-to-rhyme
Teachers, writers & word-lovers: you're welcome to quote the words and slant rhymes above.