Rhyme Science is a rhyming dictionary with the aim of making explicit the role that accent- and context-dependent pronunciation play in rhyme. Some words rhyme in some accents and not others, so if the reader and writer of a poem have different accents, the reader might not appreciate all the rhymes. On the other hand, a writer stuck for a rhyme might not be aware that if they pretend to have a different accent, they will have more rhymes at their disposal.
Rhyme Science finds all possible rhymes of a search term, and lists them according to which features an accent needs to have in order for the rhymes to work. The search can also be narrowed down to only those which work in certain kinds of accent.
For additional inspiration, there is a ‘Random Rhyme‘ button which will pick a random word and give at least one rhyme for it which works in all accents, and maybe a few which work only in specific accents. @RhymeScience on Twitter occasionally tweets interesting random rhymes I’ve found.
The Rhyme Science forum can be used to discuss accents and rhymes, or ask users for more creative rhymes.
Currently Rhyme Science has three different accent parameters, but many more are planned.
The Rhyme Science database is generated automatically from word lists and corpora by a macOS application written in Swift. I will eventually publish a version of the app, as it can be used to find rhymes in any text in order to inspire related poetry.
spondee.software 