Continuing my good-natured competition with ASp to start the most word-related threads this week. Elizabeth 0, Ken 3. Come on, gal!

A rhyme of a single stressed syllable [as stress/dress] is called a masculine rhyme; a rhyme of two or more syllables, with all but the first unstressed [as heather/feather] is called a feminine rhyme.

But why are gender words used to distinguish the two types? How did this teminoloy evolve? Perhaps (he said, semi-facetiously) on the theory that the feminine version is the more complex?