Most of us can sing the dance tune "Yankee Doodle" without too much trouble. But why is a feather called "macaroni"? Chris Roberts, author of Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: The Reason Behind the Rhyme, ...

When sounds match up at the end of a line It’s called ‘end rhyme’ and sounds mighty fine So who wins the battle? And the prize of a rattle? Let’s call it a draw? Okay, that’s fine. When words have ...

But of course, there is really any number of variations on the rhyme. Vendors can shout out any number of couplets. As of the 18th century, there was no standard to the verse. In 1733, the rhyme is ...

The lyric itself feels plush, cozy, like a big hug with an even bigger pillow. But often these nursery rhymes have much deeper meanings than on their face. Is “Mary Had a Little Lamb” one more such ...

London librarian Chris Roberts fills Debbie Elliott in on the three men in the tub as a series on the real meaning of nursery rhymes continues. Roberts is the author of Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: The ...

You can work out the rhyme scheme of a poem by labelling the words that rhyme with each other. It will help you see the pattern of the poem. For example, if a poem's first and third lines rhyme you ...

Why do we appreciate rhyming words in songs and poetry? How long can one "hold" a sound while waiting for a rhyme? Rhythm and rhyme help us to remember things. They do this through acoustic encoding, ...

For Jeremy Bentham, a philosopher, poetry was simply writing that “fails” to reach the end of the line. For W.H. Auden, a poet, poetry was that which “makes nothing happen”. Arnold Bennett, a writer, ...