Slant rhyme

Slant rhyme is a rhyme in which the sounds coincide only partially, with deviations in the consonants or vowels after the stress (for example, "worm — swarm", "eyes — light"). Slant rhymes — assonant, consonant, approximate — lend the verse a modern, unconstrained sound and expand the poet's lexical space, freeing them from the search for rare exact consonances. The active use of slant rhyme is characteristic of the modern and contemporary poetry of the 20th–21st centuries, which renounced classical perfection for the sake of a more expressive, more individual intonation. Slant rhyme is not a sign of unskilfulness: deliberately applied, it becomes a powerful stylistic device that diversifies the sound texture of a work.