alliterate
Americanverb (used without object)
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to show alliteration.
In “Round and round the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran,” the “r” alliterates.
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to use alliteration.
Swinburne often alliterates.
verb (used with object)
verb
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to contain or cause to contain alliteration
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(intr) to speak or write using alliteration
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of alliterate
First recorded in 1810–20; back formation from alliteration
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
“And he really did alliterate like that when you talked to him.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 12, 2018
And he really did alliterate like that when you talked to him.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 12, 2018
It helps that the words "latte" and "liberalism" alliterate.
From BBC ● Oct. 5, 2014
The real problem with the Washington Bullets name was that it didn't alliterate, and the reason it didn't alliterate was that Abe Pollin stole the Baltimore Bullets.
From Slate ● Jan. 12, 2010
Members of the families in Beowulf which we have reason to think historic bear names which alliterate the one with the other.
From Beowulf An Introduction to the Study of the Poem with a Discussion of the Stories of Offa and Finn by R. W. Chambers
“A passeggiata in pineta is just pleasure,” Mr. Pasanella alliterated, using the Italian word for walk.
From New York Times ● Jun. 2, 2022
Neatly alliterated with Mr. Hughes's name in the Eastern Republican powwows, was the name of Herbert C. Hoover, for Vice President.
From Time Magazine Archive
But Mr. Hoover's name was alliterated with nothing but itself in the Republican talk elsewhere.
From Time Magazine Archive
He received innumerable complimentary and alliterated nicknames, and a match with noisy and preposterous Max Baer.
From Time Magazine Archive
The fifth, also English, is anapæstic tetrameter heavily alliterated, and mono-rhymed for eight verses, with the stanza made up to ten by a couplet on another rhyme.
From The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) by George Saintsbury
The ‘h’ may have been carried over from the three alliterating ‘h’s.’
From Beowulf An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem by Lesslie Hall
It is also the only alliterating syllable in the second half-line.
From Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary by C. Alphonso (Charles Alphonso) Smith
He was ridiculed in his own time, and has been ridiculed ever since, for the alliterating twang of the line in which he declared his feeling: "Cedant arma togæ; concedat laurea linguæ."
From The Life of Cicero Volume One by Anthony Trollope
The lines are written in pairs, and each perfect line contains three alliterating words,—two in the first part, and one in the second.
From National Epics by Kate Milner Rabb
Every line attains double alliteration in the first half, with one alliterating word only in the second half.
From Beowulf An Introduction to the Study of the Poem with a Discussion of the Stories of Offa and Finn by R. W. Chambers
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