Neither rhyme nor reason

On the front inside page of a well worn notebook that belonged to the poet Philip Larkin there is a small strip of paper pasted in. 

It is a mere slip, probably published originally as one of those "Did you know" features in the Reader's Digest or from a magazine article along the same lines. 

It may even have been typed up on a larger sheet by Larkin himself and carefully trimmed of any excess for intentional use as an aide memoir for his prolific output of gloomy, death-obsessed and darkly humorous observations of human foibles and failings in prose and verse. 

The list is of commonly used words in the English language that have no rhyming matches. 

Of course, like everyone else confronted with such a list I have wracked my brain to try to prove otherwise. That thought process is , well, I would say a bit like being originally enthusiastic about wading across a small river. Initially filled with anticipation and excitement you then find yourself after only a few steps struggling through thick, gloopy mud which symbolises the mental fug of seeking out an elusive rhyming word. 

It appears that there are less than 100 such words displaying this characteristic although a good number of these from a distant bygone era of language or of a specialised scientific or elitist terminology. 

Larkin focuses on those that he is likely to confront in his writing and even provides in his distinctive hand written script a stacked list of additional words. He may have just thought of these or has found out the hard way that they are generally to be avoided in pursuit of that enigmatic phrase or end of line statement.

In the terminology of language and linguistics these non-rhyming words are masculine in nature which makes the fact that "women" numbers amongst them quite fascinating.

The list includes;

Worlds
Warmth
Month
Wolf 
Gulf
Sylph
Scarce
Wasp
Pint
Rhythm
Bilge
Film
Was
Else
Have
With
Bulb
False
Flange
Morgue 
and Spoilt.

There is a strange group of words that also feature all relating to size and volume, these being Breadth, Width and Depth although the reason for this is not clear, whether by pure accident or conspiracy.

It is an interesting list as although many are in regular and everyday conversational use they are rather quirky and just roll off the tongue in a satisfying way. I only wish that I had known about these before attempting my epic poem about mythical and iconic creatures and a buzzing insect in an abstract world where dimensions have a great significance. I would have saved myself days of , in the end, frustration and self doubt.