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[12] Etymologically, rhyme and rhythm are the same word. Both go back to medieval Latin rythmus ‘rhythm’, but whereas rhythm has reached us almost unchanged, rhyme has come via a branch line. The sort of accented verse to which the medieval Latin word was applied commonly rhymed, and so when rythmus passed into early Old French as *ritme, it carried connotations of ‘rhyming’ with it. This later developed to rime, and when English borrowed it as rime, it still contained the notion of ‘rhythm’; but by the 13th century ‘rhyme’ was becoming its main meaning. The spelling rhyme, which emerged around 1600, represents a conscious partial return to the word’s ultimate ancestors, Latin rhythmus and Greek rhuthmós.
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