Alliteration

//əˌlɪtəˈɹeɪʃən// noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The repetition of consonant sounds or letters at the beginning of two or more words immediately succeeding each other, or at short intervals; such repetition specifically involving stressed syllables. countable, uncountable

    "So fish fury all round, as there has been in the past. And as an aside, that alliteration was, sadly, not mine that of a former political correspondent of the Daily Record, John Deans, and applied to the 'cod wars' with Iceland."

  2. 2
    use of the same consonant at the beginning of each stressed syllable in a line of verse wordnet
  3. 3
    The recurrence of the same letters or sounds in accented parts of words, as in Anglo-Saxon alliterative meter. countable, uncountable

Synonyms

All synonyms
assonancebeginning rhymeblank versechimeclinkconsonance

Example

More examples

"We studied the Concordance to Shakespeare to accumulate examples of alliteration."

Etymology

From New Latin allīterātiō, from allīterātus, from allīterō, from Latin ad (“to, towards, near”) and lītera (“a letter”).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.