The Answer

The word which rhymes the most with 1400 rhymes is:

carburetion

the process of mixing (as in a carburetor) the vapor of a flammable hydrocarbon (such as gasoline) with air to form an explosive mixture especially for use in an internal-combustion engine Merriam-Webster online dictionary

Surprised? We were too and if it comes to words we have seen a thing or two at Vocapouch.

So, how do we know?

We took ISLEX database of word pronunciations. We got rid of all proper nouns and we took out only single words. We ended up with a list of 123970 unique words. Some words have more than one pronunciation (in average there is 1.16 pronunciation per word).

Then we matched words with their perfect rhymes, which all mighty Wikipedia defines as follows:

Perfect rhyme […] is a form of rhyme between two words or phrases, satisfying the following conditions: - The stressed vowel sound in both words must be identical, as well as any subsequent sounds. […] - The articulation that precedes the vowel in the words must differ. […]

For example, glove and love are the perfect rhymes because their match both conditions, but knight and night are not because they don’t fulfill the second rule.

The carburetion has exactly 1400 rhymes. But hey, why other words that rhyme with carburetion don’t have the same amount of rhymes? Take for example the second best modernization with 1390 rhymes. They both rhymes with each other, so why they don’t have an exact number of rhymes? It is due to the fact that both have two pronunciations:

carburetion: kˌɑɹbəɹˈeiʃn̩ and kˌɑɹbjɚˈiʃn̩

and modernization: mˌɑd˺ɚnəzˈeiʃn̩ and mˌɑd˺ɚnɑɪzˈeiʃə

Don’t worry, your computer is alright. These are the words expressed in International Phonetic Alphabet. The accented vowel is marked with an apostrophe. We can see that both carburetion and modernization share the same ending: ˈeiʃn which brings them most of their rhymes — exactly 1371. The other pronunciations bring them 29 and 19 rhymes respectively. That’s where the difference comes from.

But is there no other word that has two pronunciation that ends in ˈeiʃn̩ and ˈiʃn̩? Nope. At least in this database. If there was one it would have exactly same number of rhymes as carburetion.

The Endings

One might argue that the other words may have alternative pronunciations that would alter the results if they were in the database. So we prepare something more objective.

We make a list of the top 10 most popular word endings — from the stressed vowel to the end of the word:

ˈeiʃn ̩ (claudication, frication, association) — 1372 words,

̩ (claudication, frication, association) — 1372 words, ˈi (exchangee, partee, biographee) — 463 words,

(exchangee, partee, biographee) — 463 words, ˈei (cabriolet, buffet, estray) — 446 words,

(cabriolet, buffet, estray) — 446 words, ˈɑlədʒi (urology, gastroenterology, mycology) — 359 words,

(urology, gastroenterology, mycology) — 359 words, ˈɛt (unmet, vignette, cigarette) — 347 words,

(unmet, vignette, cigarette) — 347 words, ˈeiʃn̩z (expectations, hallucinations, certifications) — 285 words,

(expectations, hallucinations, certifications) — 285 words, ˈu (screw, spew, glue) — 283 words,

(screw, spew, glue) 283 words, ˈin (caffeine, marine, foreseen) — 276 words,

(caffeine, marine, foreseen) — 276 words, ˈoʊsɪs (exostosis, cleptobiosis, actinobacillosis) — 267 words,

(exostosis, cleptobiosis, actinobacillosis) — 267 words, ˈɪt˺ɪk (melanitic, glycolytic, antineuritic) — 265 words.

The Limerick

You may dispute that carburetion, is not the word with the most rhymes. You may question the completeness of the dataset, but you have to admit: the ˈeiʃn̩ ending is the leader of rhymes.

We would like to end this article with a tribute to the word carburation. Here is an awful limerick without the meter written by the author of this post: