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Words that rhyme with surgery — 80 rhymes by quality | Rhyme Land
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the rhymes and the songs that used them

Words that rhyme withsurgery

feminine
Masculine

Ends on a stressed syllable — a one-syllable rhyme, or a multisyllable word whose primary stress lands last. The rhyme hits the final beat, the way most rhymes in songs do.

Examples

love · dove · today · believe · forgot

Feminine this word

Ends with an unstressed syllable trailing the stressed one — always at least two syllables. The rhyme lands a beat earlier and trails off softly.

Examples

river · mother · follow · breaking · mountain

Masculine and feminine endings rarely sing together (the rhyme lands on a different beat), so they're kept apart here.

 vowel ER coda JH
1
What it is
  1. The syllables' vowel sounds are identical.
  2. The sounds after the vowels (if any) are identical.
  3. The syllables begin differently.
How it feels
  1. Perfect
  2. Family
  3. Additive / Subtractive
  4. Assonance
  5. Consonance
resolvedunresolved
Example

cat / hat — same AE vowel, same T ending

Source
Berklee College of Music's songwriting method (Pat Pattison)
3 syllables
perjury1
4
What it is
  1. The syllables' vowel sounds are identical.
  2. The sounds after the vowels come from the same phonetic family (e.g. T↔D, P↔B, M↔N).
  3. The syllables begin differently.
How it feels
  1. Perfect
  2. Family
  3. Additive / Subtractive
  4. Assonance
  5. Consonance
resolvedunresolved
Example

cat / pad — AE vowel; T and D are both stops

Family chart
PlosivesFricativesNasals
VoicedbdgvTHzzhjmnng
Unvoicedptkfthsshch

Each column is a family pair — same place + manner, only the voicing differs.

Source
Berklee College of Music's songwriting method (Pat Pattison)
3 syllables
nursery1cursorytertiary
5 syllables
anniversary3
75
What it is
  1. The syllables' vowel sounds are the same.
  2. The consonants after the vowel are not phonetically related.
  3. The syllables begin differently.
How it feels
  1. Perfect
  2. Family
  3. Additive / Subtractive
  4. Assonance
  5. Consonance
resolvedunresolved
Example

love / dot — both AH, but V and T have nothing in common

Assonance rhymes always have consonants after the vowels, but the consonants cannot be phonetically related.

Source
Berklee College of Music's songwriting method (Pat Pattison)
2 syllables
urgent2virgin1urges1virgins1bergesburgeonburgeonedburgeonsburgessclergies
3 syllables
mercury4burglaryallergicdetergent2urgency1urgently1burgeoning
4 syllables
infirmary2emergency3convergencesdivergencesemergences
5 syllables
27
What it is
  1. The syllables' vowel sounds are identical.
  2. The sounds after the vowels (if any) are identical.
  3. The syllables begin the same — repetition, not a rhyme.
How it feels

Off the rhyme scale — identity is repetition, not resolution. Shown so you can spot it, not reach for it.

Example

fuse / confuse — both stressed syllables are 'fuse'

Source
Berklee College of Music's songwriting method (Pat Pattison)
1 syllable
surge1serge
2 syllables
surgeon2surgeons1sergessurges1surgingupsurge
3 syllables
insurgentinsurgentsresurgenceresurgentresurgingsurgeries2surgical
4 syllables
insurgenciesinsurgencyneurosurgeon
5 syllables
6 syllables
counterinsurgenciescounterinsurgency

“surgery” at line end — from real songs

Who just crumbles and burnsHe used to do surgery
— Radiohead, “Fake Plastic Trees” · rhymes surgery / burns

How to read the 80 results

Tiers follow Pat Pattison's stability scale — pick the resolution your line needs, not just the closest sound. Bold words are common in lyrics; a struck-through word with a cliché flag is an overworked pair; a vermilion dot counts how often the pair appears at line end in our corpus of real songs.

Perfect rhyme 1
Same stressed vowel, same sounds after it, different beginning. Full resolution — the strongest closure a rhyme can give a line.
Family rhyme 4
The consonants after the vowel are swapped for phonetic siblings — T↔D, M↔N, S↔Z. Nearly as stable as perfect rhyme, with far more word choices.
Assonance 75
Only the stressed vowel matches; the consonants after it are unrelated. Loose and open — useful when a section should stay unresolved.
Identity 27
The whole stressed syllable repeats, beginning included. That's repetition, not rhyme — the line echoes instead of resolving.