Words that rhyme with Cadence
Sound and sense both matter for cadence. The sound: two-syllable, vowel on the front /ษ/, ending that trails off into a fricative. The sense: a word that wants concrete rhymes to ground it. Pair it with something tactile and the line lifts. In a song, the word is a thinking-word. Behind it, the rhyme map shows the strict column is unhelpful here, the family-rhyme list hands over a few solid slants, and the slant-by-vowel pool is enormous. Modern songwriting on this word is an assonance-first practice.
Open cadence in RhymeForge โPerfect rhymes (1 shown)
Exact match from the stressed vowel onward, with voice-pair near-perfects folded in.
- maidens
Only 1 match for cadence in this type โ the slant columns below pick up the slack.
Family rhymes (2 shown)
Same vowel, with a single consonant swapped for one from the same articulatory family. Slant rhymes that pass the ear test.
- straightens
- ultimatums
Only 2 matches for cadence in this type โ the slant columns below pick up the slack.
Additive & subtractive (25 shown)
Same core sound, with an extra consonant added (or one dropped) at the end.
- allay
- apace
- array
- astray
- away
- ba
- ballet
- betray
- bouquet
- cafe
- callais
- cliche
- convey
- crochet
- croquet
- debase
- decay
- deface
- defray
- delay
- disgrace
- dismay
- displace
- display
- dossier
Assonance (25 shown)
Matching vowel sound, consonants ignored. The biggest pool by far, and the workhorse of slant rhyming.
- greatness
- lateness
- patience
- sameness
- valence
- basins
- blatant
- caissons
- caymans
- cradles
- cravens
- hastens
- havens
- ladles
- latent
- masons
- mavens
- nations
- raisins
- ravens
- shamans
- stations
- straightened
- waitress
- weightless
Consonance (23 shown)
Matching consonant sound, vowels ignored. Best for texture and tension rather than punch.
- badness
- goodness
- guidance
- madness
- prudence
- redness
- riddance
- rudeness
- sadness
- shrewdness
- avoidance
- imprudence
- subsidence
- audience
- cloudiness
- radiance
- readiness
- rowdiness
- steadiness
- stridency
- sturdiness
- tiredness
- jurisprudence
How songwriters use these rhymes
There's the word for cadence, and the older word for maidens, and the song between them.
The cadence in the line, the straightens at the end of it โ same vowel, different door.
From cadence to allay, a consonant arrives and the rhyme reshapes.
The vowel between cadence and greatness carries the rhyme โ the consonants step aside.
Cadence and badness share the closing shape, even when the vowels disagree.
Why cadence rhymes the way it does
The phonology of cadence is a two-syllable core: the mid /ษ/ (/ษ/), then it lets the line dissolve into a fricative. In our 54,000-word dictionary the perfect-rhyme pool returns 1 match, family rhymes 2, additive and subtractive together 178, assonance 7,220, and consonance 23. The mix gives you options across the board. Strict rhymes for the structural beats, family or assonance for the interior lines. In the room with a guitar: write toward the strict rhyme first, then go back through and replace the obvious ones with the assonance matches that earned their place. Cadence is a word that benefits from the second pass.
More songwriting tools
Stuck on the chord side of the song? The chord progression builder on the Undercover Zest home page maps every common progression in every key, with borrowed chords and substitutions called out. Need a fresh angle on a stuck lyric? CollisionLab generates unexpected word pairings to break a writer's block. All free, no signup.
About RhymeForge
RhymeForge is the free rhyme finder built into Undercover Zest. It searches over 54,000 words across five rhyme types: perfect, family, additive, assonance, and consonance. It is built for songwriters, not crossword solvers, and the slant-rhyme classifications are tuned accordingly.
This page is a static snapshot of the rhymes for cadence. For interactive search, voice-pair highlighting, syllable counting and quality sorting, open cadence in RhymeForge above.