Definition of "assonance" []

• Resemblance of sound, especially of the vowel sounds in words, as in: "that dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea” ( William Butler Yeats). (noun)
• The repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds, especially in stressed syllables, with changes in the intervening consonants, as in the phrase tilting at windmills. (noun)
• Rough similarity; approximate agreement. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "When the initial letters are vowels, the gimmick is called assonance."
• "On "Irish Bulls" [VERBATIM II, 1, 1] and the German bull, by an odd coincidence of assonance, the German word for this linguistic extravagance is Verbalhornen."
• "The repetition of the same stressed vowel sounds with different consonants is called assonance: en Español"