Examples:
- Buzz/Does/Was
- Too/Blue/Grew/Flu/Through/Threw
I overheard a claim that this phenomenon is only present in English and Japanese. I'm not well versed in enough other languages to know whether this true, and I find it unlikely to be so. When I attempted to search for examples, I discovered that I don't know what this is called, or if it even has a name.
So, is there a name for groups of words with these relationships?
Bonus points: do you know of other languages in which this phenomenon exists?
Best Answer
I don't think there's an established word for it.
It's kind of the opposite of an eye rhyme, where the words are spelled the same but don't actually end with the same sounds (e.g., show and now). So you could call it an ear rhyme.
But usually, we just use the word rhyme for this, and don't distinguish between the cases where the words end with the same letters or not.
There's a word for it in French: rime pour l'oreille (literally, rhyme for the ear), which is a rhyme which doesn't necessarily satisfy the French poetic criteria to be a rime pour l'œil1 (literally rhyme for the eye).
1 In classical French poetry, words had to rhyme both for the eye and the ear. The rules for rimes pour l'œil probably seem a little esoteric for English speakers; for example, doux and nous were allowable rhymes, but you weren't allowed to rhyme these words with tout, despite the fact that their pronunciations are do, noo, and too.