Words that rhyme with Then
For lyric work, then behaves as a plain-speech anchor. Sound-wise: one-syllable, vowel on the front /ษ/, finally it rings out through a nasal. It's a word everyone uses โ which is what makes it powerful in a lyric. The word arrives in song as an unguarded everyday word. Anyone hunting rhymes for then ends up at the same crossroads: only a handful of strict perfect rhymes survive, family rhymes give you a few singable slant options, and the slant-by-vowel pool is enormous. Assonance is where the modern songwriting toolkit lives for this one.
Open then in RhymeForge โPerfect rhymes (25 shown)
Exact match from the stressed vowel onward, with voice-pair near-perfects folded in.
- been
- ben
- benne
- bren
- den
- en
- fen
- gen
- glen
- gren
- hen
- ken
- men
- pen
- ren
- renne
- sen
- sten
- ten
- wen
- when
- wren
- yen
- again
- amen
Family rhymes (15 shown)
Same vowel, with a single consonant swapped for one from the same articulatory family. Slant rhymes that pass the ear test.
- clem
- em
- eng
- femme
- gem
- hem
- leng
- meng
- phlegm
- prem
- rem
- stem
- them
- condemn
- contemn
Additive & subtractive (25 shown)
Same core sound, with an extra consonant added (or one dropped) at the end.
- bench
- bend
- bends
- bens
- bent
- blend
- blends
- brent
- brents
- cent
- cents
- cleanse
- cleansed
- clench
- clenched
- dengue
- dens
- dense
- dent
- dents
- drench
- drenched
- end
- ends
- fence
Assonance (25 shown)
Matching vowel sound, consonants ignored. The biggest pool by far, and the workhorse of slant rhyming.
- dreamt
- empt
- empts
- fremd
- gems
- hemmed
- hemp
- hems
- kemp
- length
- lengths
- memes
- renk
- stemmed
- stems
- strength
- strengths
- temp
- temps
- tempt
- tempts
- air
- aired
- airs
- ayre
Consonance (25 shown)
Matching consonant sound, vowels ignored. Best for texture and tension rather than punch.
- aine
- an
- ane
- ann
- aune
- ban
- bane
- bean
- bein
- bien
- blain
- blown
- bon
- bone
- bonne
- boon
- bowne
- brain
- bran
- brawn
- brine
- brown
- bun
- bunn
- burn
How songwriters use these rhymes
There's the word for then, and the older word for been, and the song between them.
Hold the then, then let it tilt into clem.
It started as then, ended as bench, same vowel either way.
All night the then turned into dreamt, vowel-first, consonants letting go.
Then and aine share the closing shape, even when the vowels disagree.
Why then rhymes the way it does
To understand why then rhymes the way it does, start with the vowel โ the mid /ษ/, written /ษ/ โ and the ending, which hums to a nasal close. In our 54,000-word dictionary the perfect-rhyme pool returns 36 matches, family rhymes 15, additive and subtractive together 225, assonance 10,637, and consonance 988. The mix gives you options across the board. Strict rhymes for the structural beats, family or assonance for the interior lines. In practice: start at the top of the perfect column, scan family next, and reach for the assonance pool when the strict matches feel worn. A lyric that uses only strict rhymes for then tends to read as dated; the contemporary ear forgives โ and often prefers โ the slant.
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 then. For interactive search, voice-pair highlighting, syllable counting and quality sorting, open then in RhymeForge above.