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The Devil’s Dictionary

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The Devil’s Dictionary

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Leonine
adj. Unlike a menagerie lion. Leonine verses are those in which a word in the middle of a line rhymes with a word at the end, as in this famous passage from Bella Peeler Silcox:
  The electric light invades the dunnest deep of Hades.
  Cries Pluto, ’twixt his snores: “O tempora! O mores!”
  It should be explained that Mrs. Silcox does not undertake to
teach pronunciation of the Greek and Latin tongues. Leonine verses
are so called in honor of a poet named Leo, whom prosodists appear to
find a pleasure in believing to have been the first to discover that a
rhyming couplet could be run into a single line.