Homeoteleuton, also spelled homoeoteleuton and homoioteleuton (from the Greek ὁμοιοτέλευτον, homoioteleuton, "like ending"), is the repetition of endings in words. Homeoteleuton is also known as near rhyme.

Homeoteleuton (homoioteleuton) was first identified by Aristotle in his Rhetoric, where he identifies it as two lines of verse which end with words having the same ending. He uses the following example.

ᾠήθησαν αὐτὸν παιδίον τετοκέναι,
ἀλλ᾽ αὐτοῦ αἴτιον γεγονέναι

they thought that he was the father of a child,
but that he was the cause of it

In Latin rhetoric and poetry homeoteleuton was a frequently used device. It was used to associate two words which had similar endings and bring them to the reader's attention.

We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity,
and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest
of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul.
(Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, speech, 1866)

Hungry people cannot be good at learning
or producing anything except
perhaps violence.
(Pearl Bailey, Pearl's Kitchen)

He arrived at ideas the slow way, never skating
over the clear, hard ice of logic, nor soaring
on the slipstreams of imagination, but slogging,
plodding along on the heavy ground of existence.
(Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven)

Today, homeoteleuton denotes more than Aristotle's original definition.

As rhyme, homeoteleuton is not very effective. It is the repetition of word endings. Because endings are usually unstressed and rhyme arises from stressed syllables, they do not rhyme well at all. In the following passage