BrendaChristeleit: Hey Jude! Take a sad song and make it better!

What is a feminine line and why are they considered weak? I'm no raving feminist, but perhaps a different descriptive term is in order.

Great question, Brenda!

What if I were to tell you that a masculine rhyme is blunt and obvious, while a feminine rhyme is more complex and delicate?

If your rhyme
Everytime
Is a chime
On a dime

That's a masculine rhyme. It's a single-syllable rhyme at the very end of a line. Thus, "the plane" and "explain" would be a masculine rhyme, since even though "explain" is a two-syllable word, only the last syllable rhymes.

Feminine rhyme, on the other hand, does not come at the very end of the line.

It's curvy
And nervy.
Its measure
Is pleasure.

While the use of the gendered terms "masculine" and "feminine" may seem strange to speakers of English, since English doesn't ascribe grammatical gender to its words, it may be useful to note that the Latin word for "manliness" was given a feminine gender, and the German word for "girl" is neuter. Perhaps if we had the whole world to do over again, it might make sense to choose terms that are less fraught with political meaning. The unspoken assumptions about strength and weakness, dominance and submission inform every corner of culture, including language.

Having said that, I do think it's useful to understand that when one comes across a reference to masculine or feminine rhyme, the author is usually referring to a technical term describing a rhyming pattern, and it's probably safe to assume that the vast majority of today's authors are writing without the delusion that what men consider "strength" is the only kind of strength. (We'll talk about this when we discuss Trifles.)