ASSONANCE, in Rhetoric and Poetry, a term used where the words of a phrase or a verse have the same sound or termination, and yet make no proper rhyme. These are usually accounted vicious in English, though the Romans sometimes used them with elegance, as Militem comparavit, exercitum ordinavit, aciem lustravit.
ASSONANT RHYMES is a term particularly applied to a kind of verses common among the Spaniards, where a resemblance of sound serves instead of a natural rhyme. Thus ligerá, cubierta, tierra, mesa, may answer each other in a kind of assonant rhyme, having each an e in the penult syllable, and an a in the last.