I'm looking for a word to describe a silly poetic device

I’m currently looking at a glossary of poetic terms to come up with this one particular silly poetic device. I’ve got definitions for all sorts of things, from assonance to villanelle, but I’m not finding what I’m looking for.

The only example I can think of is the old folk song “Michael Finnegan”:

There was a man named Michael Finnegan.
He grew whiskers on his chin-egan.
Wind came out and blew them in again.
Poor old Michael Finnegan, begin again.

That second line ending in “chin-egan”: Is there a technical word for adding those extra syllables onto the end to complete the rhyme and meter? There’s got to be. I don’t want to spend days looking through encyclopedias of poetry to find it, but I know that English professors are just picky enough to invent a term to describe just about everything.

I think there’s a Shel Silverstein poem that does the same thing, where he starts with the word “Popsicle” and rhymes a few words with it like “mopsicle” and “topsicle,” and eventually he ends up writing “I can’t stopsicle.” Same basic thing, although the meter in that poem isn’t standardized.

(I’m an English major, but not that major.)

I always call it “cheating” but that’s just me! I’m sorry, I don’t know the answer, I just felt sorry for your lonely post.


“You don’t have insurance? Well, just have a seat and someone will be with you after you die.” --Yes, another quality sig custom created by Wally!

A Jesusfied sig: Next time I covet thine opinion, I’ll ask for it!

poetic license -

  1. deviation from strict fact or from conventional rules of form, style, etc., as by a poet for artistic effect.
  2. freedom to do this.

Excerpted from Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia
Copyright © 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997 The Learning Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Erm. Well, what I mean is… here’s an example from the early A’s of a typical poetic terms book.

“Anacrusis” is the use of one or two unaccented syllables at the beginning of a line of verse that are not part of the metrical pattern and are regarded as preliminary.

Anacrusis is an example of poetic license, but it’s a nice, specific word. And I recognize the practice, though it’s far too late for me to think of any examples…

Or if you have an extra syllable after the final foot in a line of verse, that’s called “hypercatalectic.”

Of course, anacrusis and hypercatalectic are aspects of poetic license that have been used for centuries, and readers of English poetry probably have an instinctual understanding of them without knowing that words existed to describe them. (I myself wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t been flipping through these books…)

I’m just wondering if this particular practice has a label or not. I had somebody ask about it last week, and I started thinking back to my college English classes, especially the one focusing on Dryden, Pope and Rochester and their poetic methods, and I thought, “Well, I certainly didn’t learn about extra-syllable rhyming in Alexander Pope, but certainly some literary critic or linguist must have come up with a label for this sort of thing…” Knowing English professors, it’s probably a makeshift Greek word, sort of like “synecdoche.”

[quote]
The tune doesn’t have to be clever

And it don’t matter if you put a couple-a extra syllables into a line

It sounds more ethnic if it ain’t good English

And it don’t even gotta rhyme*

–Tom Lehrer, “The Folk Song Army”

I think you mean “rhyne.”

whistle innocently

<bump>

stroll away

[The board seems fairly busy today. Maybe somebody will find an answer. Or tell me with some authority that there isn’t one.]

I’d call it “gibberishification”… turning real words into gibberish so as to make them fit. I’m pretty sure that it’s not a real word (but I dunno… this IS English we’re talking about), but I say that we, the Straight Dopers, MAKE it a real word!!! What do y’all say?


-SPOOFE

Try a direct email to bibliophage - he has one post in the “Why Eye Color” thread on this forum. Also look for Arnold W… in the top two forums. They usually good on this kind of thing and there are others so don’t give up too fast.


Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley

Is there a term for the successful rhyming of one word with multiple other words (for example, Tom Lehrer’s “Everybody say his own/Kyrie Eleison” or “You can get whatever you want if/You can get it cleared by the pontiff”?)

All right, I will not allow this thread to be hijacked! I refuse!

So here’s the answer to your question:

You typed out the poem like this:

**
You seem to feel that the syllable “-egan” added onto “chin” is extraneous somehow. Couldn’t it be spelled “-again” and therefore make a legitimate rhyme? “chin-again”? Therefore, it doesn’t need a special term for a special rhyme, since it wouldn’t be a “special rhyme”?
Thus:

**
Is there money riding on this?


“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen

Re your Shel Silverstein example, that’s just called “poetic license”. There aren’t any rules governing made-up silly words, with technical terms for each particular silliness. Read some Ogden Nash sometime. If there were technical terms for this kind of thing, he’d need a whole encyclopedia all to himself.

Here’s a small sample:

**

AFAIK, this is just called “poetic license”. {And it’s a good thing that poets are required to be licensed, otherwise Mr. Nash might have seriously hurt someone!)


“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen

Yeah, it’s called “rhyme”, subspecies “clever”. I believe Cole Porter was its foremost practitioner. :smiley:


“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen

Er.

Notthemama, old thing… fortunately, no, there’s no financial transaction being made. And I would tend to accept your answer… except that your answer to matt_mcl’s question is a bit wrong-ish…

I recently fed “Michael Finnegan” into Altavista and confirmed that the lyrics are not “he grew whiskers on his chin again” but in fact include the rhyme-enforcing word “chin-egan.”

bibliophage! Where are you?

EnochF, I think you and Jois are taking advantage of my pride. I read your question when you first posted it, but frankly I didn’t care what the answer was. Yesterday’s direct plea was a challenge, and you know I can’t back down from a challenge. I’m looking into it, but I haven’t found anything yet. I’ll let you know if I do. (I still don’t care what the answer is, mind you, but now I do care whether it can be found, and whether I can find it.)


Work is the curse of the drinking classes. (Oscar Wilde)

All I can suggest is checking out this glossary (unless it’s the one you were already perusing.)

Glossary of Poetic Terms

With this link, “Entire Glossary Version”, you can get the whole glossary on one (big) web page.

Neologism?


When the wheels come off, it’s time to retire.

Sorry, but I gotta pick a bone with ya, there, Enoch old boy, old boy.

It’s spelled like that in Alta Vista’s search engine because whoever typed it into it, some little Clerk Typist earning $7.00 an hour somewhere, had the opinion that that was how it was spelled. (Either that, or some middle manager somewhere had the opinion that that was how it should be spelled, and so instructed her/him.) I am entitled to my own opinion, which is that it should be spelled “chin-again”. :smiley:

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen

Say, I just found a sense of humor layin’ on the floor over here in the corner! Anyone missing theirs? :smiley:


“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen