D'you know how many words rhyme with "you"? Lots. An embarrassment of riches. Any songwriter who can't fill a rhymes-with-you line with something creative and brilliant isn't worthy of the name.
As I sometimes do in times of trouble, I turned tonight to the handy rhyming dictionary Ron the Drummer gave me for my birthday several years ago. Perhaps revisiting the available words would provide the poke I needed to get moving again.
I looked under do and found the following:
accrue, ado, bamboo, blew, boo, boohoo, brew, caribou, cashew, drew, flew, flue, glue, gnu, goo, grew, Hindu, hitherto, hullabaloo, igloo, impromptu, into, issue, Kalamazoo, kangaroo, kazoo, kickapoo, misconstrue, moo, outdo, overdo, overthrew, peekaboo, Peru, poo, rendezvous, screw, shampoo, shoe, shoo, shrew, Sioux, slew, slue, stew, taboo, tattoo, threw, through, tissue, to, too, true, two, undo, voodoo, wahoo, well-to-do, who, withdrew, woo, yahoo, zoo, Zulu (see you)I puzzled at the instructions to see you at the end. Generally this dictionary only does that when all the rhymes are listed under the other word.
I flipped to you and found this:
adieu, anew, avenue, barbecue, bayou, chew, choo-choo, cue, curfew, debut, dew, due, ensue, ewe, few, guru, honeydew, hue, I.O.U., imbue, ingenue, interview, Jew, knew, lieu, new, Nehru, overdue, pee-ewe, pew, preview, pursue, renew, residue, revenue, review, spew, subdue, sue, undue, view, yew (see do)If you gave both entries more than a cursory glance, you may have noticed that these are completely nonoverlapping sets. Any word that appears in the first list doesn't appear in the second.
Why?
Something else I just now noticed: neither list includes blue. How is that kickapoo has a presence here, but a basic, oft-used word like blue didn't make the cut?
Who isn't there either.
This bears further investigation.
3 comments:
Here's an idea: give us the lyrics you have so far and run a contest to see who comes up with the best answer to your dilemma. In the meanwhile, have you tried "foo"? Short for "fooey."
Susan,
Check out http://www.rhymezone.com/
It's the best rhyme tool I've found. I even have it bookmarked on my Blackerry!
Jeff
Dad: Fun idea, except that I'm too much of a control freak for such a contest. ("Foo" is one of those words that works better as a standalone. Although it would be funny to say something like "I'm knee-deep in the foo.")
Jeff: Wow, that site is cool. I looked up "do" on it and discovered that they break the results down by how many syllables the word has! I'll be back.
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