Anglais
Alliteration: A Sound, Not a Letter
Alliteration repeats the sound at the start of nearby words, not the letter, which is why city and cat do not alliterate but phone and fish do.
Alliteration
Alliteration is the repetition of the same opening consonant sound in words that sit close together, judged by sound rather than by spelling.
- Aussi appelé
- Head rhyme
- Où les élèves le rencontrent
- Grade 3 English, in poetry and in work on tongue twisters, and again at GCSE in any question about how a writer's language creates an effect.
La réponse en bref
Alliteration is the repetition of the same sound at the start of two or more nearby words. It works on sound, not spelling: city and cat do not alliterate, because one begins with an s sound; phone and fish do, because both begin with an f sound.
Un exemple
The wild wind whipped the washing from the line.
Four words open with the same w sound, and each one needs the lips to round before the sound arrives. Read the line aloud and the mouth is doing something close to blowing. That is why the device is worth mentioning here: the sound of the sentence imitates the thing the sentence describes, which no list of adjectives could manage.
The rule is about sound, and the exceptions prove it
The test is what your mouth does, not what the page shows. This catches out a lot of otherwise good answers, because English spelling and English pronunciation stopped agreeing centuries ago.
- City and cat — no. The c in city is an s sound.
- Phone and fish — yes. Both begin with an f sound.
- Know and night — yes. The k in know is silent, so both begin with n.
- House and hour — no. The h in hour is silent, so it begins with a vowel sound.
- Chef and chair — no. One is a sh sound, the other a ch sound.
- Gem and goat — no. One is a j sound, the other a hard g.
How close is close enough
Reading the words aloud settles every one of those cases in about a second, which makes this one of the few points in English analysis with a genuinely reliable test. Proximity is the other half of it. The words need not be adjacent, but they must be close enough for a reader to hear the pattern inside one phrase or line. Two matching sounds twelve words apart are a coincidence, and claiming otherwise in an essay is usually spotted.
Two neighbouring terms are worth keeping straight. Sibilance is the specific repetition of s, sh and z sounds, and unlike alliteration it counts wherever in the word the sound falls. Assonance repeats vowel sounds instead of consonants.
What to say it does
Alliteration has no single effect, which is why saying it makes the line flow better is worth nothing. The effect depends entirely on which sound is repeated, because different sounds demand different work from the mouth.
Hard sounds — b, d, k, t, p — are abrupt, and writers reach for them for impact, violence or anger. Continuous sounds — s, f, m, l, w — slow a line down and are used for calm, secrecy or menace depending on what surrounds them. Name the sound, say what it makes the reader's mouth do, then connect that to the scene.
It is also why so much advertising and journalism uses it. Headlines and brand names alliterate because the pattern sticks in the ear, not because it is beautiful.
Questions fréquentes
Do city and cat alliterate?
No. Alliteration works on sound, not on the letter you see. The c in city is pronounced as an s, so the two words begin differently and there is no pattern for a reader to hear. Cat and kite do alliterate, even though they start with different letters.
What is the difference between alliteration and sibilance?
Alliteration is any repeated opening sound. Sibilance is the particular repetition of s, sh, z and soft c sounds, and unlike alliteration it counts wherever the sound falls in the word rather than only at the start. Sibilance is worth naming separately because its effect is consistent: it quietens and lengthens a line.
How many words do you need for alliteration?
Two satisfies the definition, though most readers only notice the pattern from three. Proximity matters more than the count. A repeated sound spread across a whole paragraph is not something anyone can hear, so it is not a device you can write about.
Is alliteration only found in poetry?
No, and it is heavier in advertising, headlines, brand names and speeches than in most modern poems. Old English verse was built on alliteration rather than on rhyme, which is where the habit in English writing comes from and why it still sounds natural in the language.
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