Ask Marilyn in todays Sunday’s Parade (A paper inserted magazine) had a similar question,
What do these words have in common orange, month, purple and silver?
Her answer was “No other English words rhyme perfectly with them”
orange: door hinge (especially if you’re Cockney).
I never understood this poem, until I started considering that it might not be meant for an Indiana dialect:
There was a little girl who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead
And when she was good she was very very good
And when she was bad she was horrid
So, the dialectics are definitely something to consider…
I still don’t understand it.
In some British dialects, “forehead” and “horrid” rhyme. Forrid, horrid.
I’m from the Midwest America and this poem always made sense to me…
“for-hed”
“hor-ed”
No?
“Feldspar,” said Nott.
gih-TAR
SEE-tar
nope.
Louis Sachar comes up with a good forced rhyme for purple, I think in Sideways Stories from Wayside School. It goes something like this:
The baby’s face is turning purple
Will anything soothe him? I bet a burp’ll
I’ve heard guitar pronounced as GEE-tar, particularly in the Southern US.
gih-Tar
sih-Tar
yep.
Pint
Ninth
No one Mentioned that new M&M Comercial.
Some actress (I think from Will and Grace) Goes through all the colors and rhymes them in song. The M&M “men” are there with her, and participate in the song.
She gets to orange, and pauses… “Wait nothing Rhymes with Orange”
to this the Orange M&M man asks “I still get paid, Right?”
Four eng-
ineers
wear orange
brassieres.
–Willard Espy (I think)
More Espy:
How many moons in the full month?
Four, as the swift river run’th.
To find a rhyme for silver
Merely takes will, ver-
bosity and cleverness.
I heard it as:
To find a rhyme for “silver,”
Or any rhymeless rhyme,
Requires only will, ver-
bosity, and time.
And one that I’m sure I’m not remembering quite right:
“Can you,” said Tom to Lisping Bill,
“Find any rhyme for ‘month’?”
“Of course I can,” said Lisping Bill,
“I’ll find a rhyme at onth!”
(see, he lisped the word “once”…oh well, I tried.)
There was a book, I believe by Jack Chalker, that had an island where there was a prophet who spoke only in rhymes. He had an assistant, named Milver Surple, “just in case”.
I suppose the truly deperate poet could always mention my frined angie. We like to call her “ange”.
wrenchslinger
Orange schmorange !
How about patient?
Abortifacient.
(A tricky one to slip into a song, though)