What rhymes with envious?

Answer 1

I'm not just going to give a list. I'm going to try to lay out an APPROACH to finding rhymes (with a number of examples) that I hope will help you not just in this case, but the next time you're looking for a tough rhyme
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(Before you even start, do remember that when writing a poem, keep trying many different phrasings with different words at the end/rhyming position. You may find some other word with the exact match you need, or at least one that has MANY good rhymes and so is easier to work with.)

First, there is no PERFECT rhyme for "envious"

There may be some decent NEAR rhymes (though none of the answers so far has listed one.)

A thing to remember in all this is that the ACCENTED syllable is an important part of rhyming.

For a perfect rhyme this means you need to match not just "ous" or "ious" but ALL the sounds from the vowel of the accented syllable (the e -/eh/ sound) on. In other words it must include ALL the sounds of "envious"!

For a near rhyme you don't need to precisely match everything, but you almost always DO have to come close to matching the accented syllable, or at least its vowel sound.

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The best near rhymes usually have "full assonance"--meaning that ALL the VOWEL sounds match-- and "final consonance" (the final consonant matches). The close the remaining consonant sounds match, the better.

The pattern you're looking for is -eh-ee-ous (various consonants between those vowel sounds may work). NOTE that the final vowel sound is an UN-accented sound, NOT quite the same as a short accented u (as in "put"). This sound is the "reduced" form of SEVERAL vowels. Thus the sound

So in this case, look for words that:
a) end with "ious" --and pronounced as TWO syllables, with the -ee-us sound (as en-vi-ous does), not one. This means a number of words ending in -tious and -cious won't quite work since these endings are pronounced as one syllable. An 'extra' sound at the end may also work pretty well, e.g., -st instead of just -s.

b) match the short e of "en", not the long e of "abstemious".

c) if possible, match the /n/ of the first syllalble, or come very close. /m/ would work here. Or (second choice) try to get something close to the /v/ sound -- sounds that usually work best are /b/ /d/ /th -with the voice, as in "then" NOT "thin"/; next would be related sounds without the voice /t/, /f/ /th -unvoiced]. If you can get fair matches for both (e.g., /nd/), great!

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Possible rhymes - roughly from best (closest) to worst (though #6 is a special category, which when appropriate may work VERY well):

(1) Best matches:
compendious, plenteous
trendiness, friendliness, penniless
heaviness, readiness, steadiness, deadliness
trendiest, friendliest, emptiest, lengthiest
heaviest, steadiest, readiest, headiest, deadliest
contumelious

(2) Change the middle vowel
You might find that words whose middle vowel does not exactly match the /ee/ sound of that i (-i-ous) might work for you, especially since that sound has very little accent. Several words with a 'u' in that position might work:

adventurous, strenuous, tenuous, ingenuous, tremulous, contemptuous
generous, sensuous, tempestuous, impetuous
embolus, cephalous, effortless, exodus
measureless, restiveness
obstreperous

(3) Different short vowel in accented syllable
This is much weaker, but you MAY be able to use a word where the accented vowel (the short e) does not exactly match. BUT it needs to be fairly close --a short i or perhaps some sort of a. (Long a may work because it is closely related to short e; long e, actually, is not!)

impious
libidinous, hideous, lascivious, amphibious
fastidious, perfidious, insidious, invidious
dizziness
supercilious, deciduous, Odysseus
amorous, clamorous, glamorous
handiness, nastiness, handsomeness, randomness, avarice
extraneous, instantaneous, simultaneous
habeas (as in "habeas corpus"), flavorless
various, nefarious, precarious, gregarious, hilarious, perilous
achiness, hastiness

(4) TWO-WORD Phrases
*empty us, ready us, censure us, any less, any test(s), many pests

Again, note that "us", which has its own accent, is not an EXACT match for the UN-naccented "-ous" (Unless you deliberately draw out the sounds "envy us" is NOT pronounced exactly the same as "envy us".) That's part of the reason it may work with "less" and "pest(s)"...

(5) Long (e)-vowel in accented syllable
Since not all poetry is as demanding about how closely the rhymes match (comic verse, such as limericks, seems particularly forgiving), you might get away with things that might not ordinarily work

arsenious, devious, previous, abstemious
tedious, serious, deleterious

(6) Fake it!
Finally, in rare instances, you may play around with a DELIBERATE MIS-pronunciation of the rhyming word (not usually recommended outside comic verse!) In this case, you could ADD a syllable. Easy way is to use a word ending with -tious or -cious , but (mis)pronounce the ending with two-syllables, e.g., "pre-ten-ti-ous", "ten-den-ci-ous".

Or CREATE an extra syllable that's not really there at all (as people do when they mispronounce grievous and mischievous as if they were "griev-i-ous" and "mischiev-i-ous")

Answer 2

devious, obvious

Answer 3

mischievous

Answer 4

extraneous

Answer 5

envious...coitus..boisterous..bulbous...humorous...monstrous...lotus...noxious