On Asking the Lazyweb: What Rhymes With ‘Gareth’?

Posted by Roo - 10/10/07 at 01:10:34 pm

Over a cup of tea this morning, it became apparent that Darren, having recently written a poem/rhyme/limerick in which he’d wanted to rhyme the name of our friend and colleague Gareth Jones, had given up rhyming using the surname because ‘Gareth’ was too hard. The obvious conversation ensued, in which we pretty much universally failed to find any rhymes for it, but I vowed to do some research.

My first stop was actually this rhyming dictionary, which suggested the equally useless berreth and schlereth. So I asked Twitter (which now also updates my Facebook status) . Here’s that request, and some of the responses:

In text form, with links…

  • Lloyd suggested tariff.
  • Minifig provided a link to this list of *eth words (which includes Beth, Elizabeth, twentieth, thirtieth (etc), Kenneth, Macbeth, and meth)
  • Guy not only suggests azimuth, bismuth and barracks but even crafts a new tongue twister: “Gareth’s got the carrots for the tariff at the barracks”.
  • Andy suggests Nazareth, shibboleth, breath and megadeath.
  • Jazz jests that Paris (with a lisp) is close enough
  • While my brother wrote mammoth on my Facebook wall (which will hopefully confuse some people).

Gareth: tariff, Beth, Elizabeth, twentieth, thirtieth, Kenneth, Macbeth, meth, azimuth, bismuth and barracks, Nazareth, shibboleth, breath, megadeath, mammoth, …

Thanks everyone. The internet is great. Hope that helps Darren with his next poem.

7 Comments »

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  1. Pls do not neglect ‘Harif’…the arab tribe headed up by Anthony Quinn in Laurence of Arabia. The ‘i’ is flat sounding, and thus pronounced more like an ‘e’. I knew my two years in the desert woudl pay off….

    Comment by Joe Hanley at IBM — October 10, 2007 #

  2. Something like ‘Harreff’? Thanks Joe.

    See? Social media in action. (I had no idea you’d spent two years in the desert!) Brilliant.

    Comment by Roo — October 10, 2007 #

  3. So this is what it’s like to have Web fame… Social computing in action, very impressed :)

    ‘Paris with a lisp’ has gotta be the best – brilliant!

    Comment by Gareth — October 10, 2007 #

  4. I think I should make it clear that, as nice as he is, I don’t generally spend my time writing poems about Gareth.

    Comment by Darren — October 10, 2007 #

  5. I laughed out loud (literally) at work when I read ‘Paris with a lisp’ – hilarious!

    Comment by Chris — October 10, 2007 #

  6. If you’d asked me, I would have gone for tariff, but Paris is definitely the best.

    Rhymes for words that have no rhyme can often be found using slant rhymes. (Much better than ‘perfect’ rhymes if you ask me).

    Comment by kyb — October 10, 2007 #

  7. Oh man, Mammoth… how could I have missed it? By far the best. There I was talking under my breath… “Barruth, darruth, lammuth, farruth”… but missed the only word that truly works. Zounds!

    Comment by Guy Parsons — October 11, 2007 #

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