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Alliteration always ameliorates average aural assemblages! Or, in other words, alliteration always makes your writing sound better. Just kidding, it might not. But, alliteration can help you to express yourself more creatively in your writing—and let you create a sense of sonic play that takes your written work to the next level. We’ll walk you through 140 awesome alliteration examples in just a moment. 

What is alliteration? 

Alliteration is the repetition of the letter and/or the sound of the letter at the beginning of the words in a sentence or phrase. For example, the first sentence in this post. Here are some other quick examples:

1) Humid humans humming 

2) Snakes stop suddenly slipping 

3) Tongue twisters 

4) Back-breaking 

5) Bottom barrel

It can be a fun challenge to try to write full sentences that utilize alliteration. But shorter phrases and descriptions that repeat the first letter or sound at the start of a word can make your writing feel punchy, fresh, and can make a description or moment really stand out. Take a look at these fun examples:

6) Lovely ladies 

Alliteration Examples (Continued)

7) Fresh and fast 

8) Stolen stars 

9) Last love  

10) Bad blood 

11) Blue-blooded 

12) Rinse and repeat 

13) Mountain man 

14) Long-legged 

15) Cute and cuddly

Assonance and consonance

Alliteration breaks down further into two smaller subcategories: assonance and consonance.

Assonance is the repetition of a vowel sound in a series of words. According to the dictionary, assonance is “the relatively close juxtaposition of similar sounds especially of vowels.” (as in ‘rise high in the bright sky’)

Assonance is often used in poetry and lyrical writing to create an open sense of movement. It can create the effect of pulling a reader through a sentence, as the ear glides over the open sound of the vowels.
What are some examples of assonance? 

16) Rise high in the bright sky (from Webster’s) 

17) Any penny brings plenty 

18) The worth of the Earth is full of mirth 

19) The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plains 

20) Shift and listen to man’s crisp lisp 

21) Rocket hockey 

22) Slap dash 

23) She’s a clean freak 

Alliteration Examples (Continued)

24) Massive crash 

25) Blonde bombshell (both alliterative and assonant!) 

26) Free to dream 

27) Flirty and dirty 

28) A warm storm 

29) His mean streak 

30) You were wrong about him being long gone 

31) Put the little bundle in the trundle bed 

32) Fantastic whiplash 

If assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in a word, you might be able to guess what its opposite is. Consonance is the repetition of the consonant sound in a word. 

says that, specifically, consonance is the “recurrence or repetition of consonants especially at the end of stressed syllables without the similar correspondence of vowels.” 

Let’s take a look at some examples: 

33) A stroke of luck 

Alliteration Examples (Continued)

34) Affronting, afraid of nothing 

35) Euphonious fish

36) Crackling chromatic chromosome  

37) Ugly, gloomy day 

38) Grind my gears 

39) Erratic and errant behaviors

40) Superfluous repulsive repugnancy  

41) Holland’s hallowed lollipops 

42) Ridiculous redundancies 

Alliteration Examples (Continued)

43) Curmudgeonly curcumin 

44) Blank panic in the dank attic 

45) Righteous justice 

46) Untimely tomato 

47) Wretched stench 

48) Bobby’s hobbies hobbled his lobbying capabilities 

49) I had written the wit and was bitten by it

The repetition of vowels and consonants can create different results in the minds of your readers. Depending on the consonant sound that you choose, consonance can give your sentences a harder, rougher edge. Assonance can give a sentence a more open, airy sensibility. 

Different sources disagree about whether assonance or consonance needs to happen at a specific point in the word (Webster’s saying, for instance, that consonance should happen on stressed syllables). However, these categories are rather open. No one is checking your homework. If you see the words “Alice ate her apple, apparently,” and you want to say, “Not only is the sentence alliterative, it’s assonant!” no one will come after you with a stick. These are fairly flexible categories that simply help us to make sense of the way that word sounds work. Don’t get too caught up in the dirty details. (See what I did there?) 

What’s the difference between assonance, consonance, and rhyme? 

A rhyme occurs when the final sounds of two or more words sound the same. Ham, cram, lamb, slam. We could also say that all of these words are assonant, because they share the same vowel sound on the letter A. We could say that they rhyme because they are assonant, but that’s because the vowel sounds help contribute to the end sound of the word, where the rhyme is found. 

Oregon State University Associate Professor of American Literature Raymond Malewitz the example of Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “The Fish,” in which we can note a number of examples of assonance, consonance, and rhyme all together. 

Malewitz uses the following section of the longer to illustrate his point: 

Battered and venerable

and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.

Can you pull out the instances of assonance and consonance? 

Alliteration Examples (Continued)

Here’s what I’ve found: 

50) “Battered and venerable” – Consonance on the “er” sound

51) “Here and there” – Consonance on the “r” sound

52) “Brown skin hung” – Consonance on the “n” sound 

53) “Skin hung in strips” – Assonance on the “i” sound 

54) “Ancient wallpaper” – Assonance on the “a” sound 

55) “Pattern of darker” – Consonance on the “er” sound 

56) “Was like wallpaper: shapes” – Assonance on the “a” sound 

57) “Full-blown roses” – Assonance on the “o” sound 

58) “Speckled with barnacles” – Consonance on the “k”/hard “c” sound 

59) “Fine rosettes of lime” – Assonance on the “i” sound 

60) “And infested with tiny white sea-lice” – Assonance on the “i” sound 

61) “And underneath two or three” – Consonance on the “th” sound 

62) “Green weed” – Assonance on the “ee” sound 

63) “Hung down” – Consonance on the “n” sound 

This section was a bit of a deep dive on assonance and consonance, so let’s take a step back to alliteration and think about the difference. 

Alliterative tongue twisters 

Another place that we can see classic alliteration show up is in classic childhood tongue twisters. Do you remember these classic tongue twisters—and can you still do them while you note the alliteration? 

64) She sells seashells by the seashore. The shells she sells are surely seashells. So if she sells shells on the seashore, I’m sure she sells seashore shells.

65) Betty Botter bought a bit of butter. “But,” she said, “the butter’s bitter. If I put it in my batter, it will make my batter bitter. But, a bit of better butter will make my batter better.” So, she bought a bit of butter, better than her bitter butter. And she put it in her batter. And the batter was not bitter.

66) Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

67) Zebras zig and zebras zag 

68) A proper copper coffee pot 

69) The blue bluebird blinks 

70) Sheep should sleep in the shed

71) Greek grapes, Greek grapes, Greek grapes

72) Fresh French fried fly fritters 

73) Daddy draws doors 

74) Gobbling gargoyles gobbled gobbling goblins

75) Picky people pick Peter Pan Peanut-Butter, ’tis the peanut-butter picky people pick.

76) Brisk brave brigadiers brandished broad bright blades, blunderbusses, and bludgeons—balancing them badly.

77) Babbling baby boys blurted boldly.

Teaching alliteration: exercises for students with examples 

One simple way to teach alliteration to students is to have them practice devising their own alliterative sentences and phrases for each letter of the alphabet. Not only is this a great way to practice and reinforce the idea of alliteration and how it works, an exercise like this also tasks students to call upon their entire lexicon. This can help them develop a more complex and useful “active lexicon” as they pull language up for their “passive lexicon” to put them into practice in the exercise. 

When asking students to draft examples of alliteration, teachers can task them with writing examples for each letter of the alphabet (on a cute worksheet, for example). You could also ask them to draft examples for only specific sections of the alphabet, and then have students share their section with a group, which would then demonstrate examples from every letter of the alphabet. 

Teachers can also give students a minimum number of words to hit for each example. There could be bonus points for anyone who can write a full alliterative sentence. 

Here are some examples to get your students started on each letter of the alphabet. 

A Examples 

78) Alfred ate apples 

79) American apparel is awesome 

80) Ancient antiques are in any apartment 

B Examples 

81) Bullies better behave

82) Butterflies belong in the beautiful beyond 

83) Black and blue bruises 

C Examples 

84) Crispy coconut candies 

85) Crying can be caring 

86) Close the case, c’mon 

Alliteration Examples (Continued)

D Examples 

87) Don’t drop Daddy! 

88) Didn’t doomsday deem us done? 

89) Donut dunkers drink decaf 

E Examples 

90) Everything electric enchanting everyone 

91) Errands every day err on the extreme 

92) Eels eat enticing eclairs 

F Examples 

93) Funny, furry Frank

94) Fly fishing is fun for the four of us 

95) Flipping frontwards on the floorboards 

G Examples 

96) Great gooey gumballs 

97) George is going to Great Grandmother’s garage 

98) Grind my green gravestone 

Alliteration Examples (Continued)

H Examples 

99) Honey hasn’t been hotter 

100) Human hearts hurt 

101) Hungry hippos hunt hiding hamsters 

I Examples 

102) Interesting investigations inspire me 

103) It’s insistently icey in Iceland 

104) Inquire to the inspector of the igloo 

J Examples 

105) Jumping jacks just jolt me 

106) July justly jumped the juniper tree 

107) Join the jingle jam session, Jason!  

Alliteration Examples (Continued)

K Examples 

108) Kind of kindred kangaroos 

109) Kiss me, Kate 

110) Kittens keep kites under their kilts 

Note: Alliteration is just about sound, so while it is a difficult exercise to come up with alliterative phrases that use only the same letter, it would also be fine to push students to come up with examples that use only the same sounds. For example, it’s alliterative to say, “Kittens cartwheel kindly.” It is not, however, alliterative to say, “Kittens cartwheel kneeling.” Though “kneeling” starts with a k, the kn combination makes only the n sound, unlike kitten and cartwheel.  

L Examples 

111) Lisa likes Lenny 

112) Lumpy little leather lashes 

113) Lights look less luminous when left lonely 

M Examples 

114) Mrs. Marple’s maple milkshake 

115) My mother makes millions of manicotti 

116) Money manages to maul men maliciously 

Alliteration Examples (Continued)

N Examples 

117) Nobody nurses Norton 

118) Nothing like November nutrition 

119) Nuts and nougat are notoriously nasty 

O Examples 

120) Orange orangutans open olive oil 

121) Ollie owns only orchids 

122) Ostriches organize other otters 

P Examples  

123) Pleasing pickles picked plainly 

124) Penelope placed her pen perfectly 

125) Pride and prejudice are pretty punitive 

Note: Q, U, X, Y, and Z got left out for obvious reasons. Can you make full alliterative phrases with these letters? 

Alliteration Examples (Continued)

R Examples 

126) Really ridiculous rodents running 

127) Rainy realities are ruining Roger’s running race 

128) The right rent renders Ronald righteous 

S Examples 

129) Shirley shuts the syrup shop 

130) Someone’s sudden silly surprise 

131) Sweet and sour soup is savory 

T Examples 

132) Trust me, Trixie, that’s the truth 

133) Totally twisted tomato turnovers 

134) Tickling Tony tries to take the trophy 

Alliteration Examples (Continued)

V Examples 

135) Very vapid vampires 

136) Voluptuous voles vacate their vines 

137) Victory is vicious when vaunted 

W Examples 

138) Wendell wanted Wednesday to be wrong 

139) Written words won’t wake you 

140) When the wombats wobble, we wander widely 

See how silly and fun these are? You can encourage your students to simply use their imaginations to try to come up with as many combinations as possible. Dictionaries and thesauruses aren’t a bad addition to these exercises, either. Writing alliterative phrases can help us all learn and use new words. 

Alliteration Examples – Additional Resources

• 400 Glorious Adjectives to Describe a Person 
• 100 Creative Writing Prompts for Middle & High School
• 100 Tone Words to Express Mood in Your Writing
• 160 Good Argumentative Essay Topics for Students in 2024
• How to Write the AP Lang Rhetorical Analysis Essay (With Example)
• How to Write the AP Lang Argument Essay (With Example)