Word.ws English Dictionary

rhyme or reason

rhyme or reason noun: logic; common sense.

Noun

rhyme or reason (uncountable)

  1. (idiomatic) Logic; common sense.
    • Prices vary considerably from one town to another with no apparent rhyme or reason.
    • He would often fly into an unexpected rage without rhyme or reason.

Examples of rhyme or reason in a sentence

  • I could see no rhyme or reason for the referee's decision. It was baffling!
  • I wished there had been a central essay to anchor the others or some kind of discernable rhyme or reason to their placement.1992 February 2, Ed Zirnheld, “Disappointed”, in Gay Community News, volume 19, number 28, page 4:

Forms of rhyme or reason

alternative formrhyme nor reason

Origin of rhyme or reason

Calque of Middle French n'y avoir ryme ne raison (Eustache Deschamps), attributed to the poet Edmund Spenser in a conversation with Queen Elizabeth I.

Questions about rhyme or reason

What does rhyme or reason mean?
Rhyme or reason means logic; common sense.
How do you use rhyme or reason in a sentence?
I could see no rhyme or reason for the referee's decision. It was baffling!
What part of speech is rhyme or reason?
Rhyme or reason is a noun.

Words near rhyme or reason in the dictionary

  1. rhyme dictionary
  2. rhyme letter
  3. rhyme letters
  4. rhyme nor reason
  5. rhyme off
  6. rhyme or reason
  7. rhyme out
  8. rhyme royal
  9. rhyme scheme
  10. rhyme schemes
  11. rhyme up

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rhyme or reason (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-rhyme or reason.ogg.

Cite this entry: “rhyme or reason.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rhyme_or_reason. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.