Words that rhyme with Selves
In phonetic terms, selves is a two-syllable anchor on the centred /ษ/, which spills into a fricative. Common words like this gain weight from the company they keep on the line. The headline counts: strict rhymes are scarce, the family-rhyme column adds honest near-rhymes, and the assonance pool is the one that won't run out. The lyric headline: it works as a stop-by-stop-grocery-shelf word. The slant-by-vowel column will carry you a long way past the strict matches.
Open selves in RhymeForge โPerfect rhymes (6 shown)
Exact match from the stressed vowel onward, with voice-pair near-perfects folded in.
- delves
- elves
- shelves
- theirselves
- themselves
- yourselves
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.
- delfs
- selfs
Only 2 matches for selves 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.
- delve
- shelve
- twelve
- belles
- bells
- bels
- cells
- cels
- dwells
- ells
- els
- fells
- gels
- kells
- pels
- schmelz
- sells
- shells
- smells
- spells
- swells
- tells
- wells
- yells
- eh
Assonance (25 shown)
Matching vowel sound, consonants ignored. The biggest pool by far, and the workhorse of slant rhyming.
- delved
- elms
- helms
- realms
- shelved
- welds
- belts
- celts
- delft
- elks
- felts
- helps
- kelps
- melts
- pelts
- speltz
- twelfth
- wealths
- belched
- bends
- blends
- cairns
- delph
- elf
- ends
Consonance (20 shown)
Matching consonant sound, vowels ignored. Best for texture and tension rather than punch.
- solves
- valves
- wolves
- absolves
- dissolves
- elvers
- evolves
- involves
- olives
- resolves
- revolves
- salvos
- solvers
- bolivars
- calvaries
- dissolvers
- pulverize
- revolvers
- rollovers
- televise
How songwriters use these rhymes
Every time I write selves, the next line wants delves.
Hold the selves, then let it tilt into delfs.
Selves alone, delve in the chorus โ the song builds the consonant in.
Selves on the upbeat, delved on the down โ the slant does the work.
Inside the line, selves echoes solves on consonant alone.
Why selves rhymes the way it does
Pull selves apart phonetically and you get a two-syllable word with the front /ษ/ (/ษ/) as the rhyme-bearing vowel; the close softens into a fricative tail. In our 54,000-word dictionary the perfect-rhyme pool returns 6 matches, family rhymes 2, additive and subtractive together 50, assonance 12,074, and consonance 20. The mix gives you options across the board. Strict rhymes for the structural beats, family or assonance for the interior lines. Writing-tip: don't end every line with the strict rhyme. Use the slant columns at the joints and the strict matches at the seams. Selves works hardest when the slant carries the verse and the strict match closes the chorus.
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 selves. For interactive search, voice-pair highlighting, syllable counting and quality sorting, open selves in RhymeForge above.