homeoteleuton

English

Alternative forms

• homoeoteleuton
• homoioteleuton

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Ancient Greek ὁμοιοτέλευτον (homoiotéleuton, “like ending”).

Noun

homeoteleuton (plural homeoteleuta or homeoteleutons)

1. The repetition of endings in words; near rhyme.
   • [1835, L[arret] Langley, A Manual of the Figures of Rhetoric, […], Doncaster: Printed by C. White, Baxter-Gate, →OCLC, page 91:

     Homoioteleuton makes the measure chime
     With the same endings of the fetter'd rhyme.]

2. The accidental omission, when copying a text, of a passage between repeated words or phrases, as the eye skips from one to the next without noticing the words between.