Lyricist's Lexicon

Nicknamed the Poet's Bible, the Lyricist's Lexicon is a pair of books: a dictionary of rhymes and a dictionary of consonance. Both are free to download below.

[Rhyme] ចួន.pdf

[Consonance] រណ្ដំ.pdf

A website version is hosted at poet.puthyrathy.com:

If you're curious about the story of the books, I also wrote a Substack essay about them. (No, it wasn't just prompting ChatGPT. As of 2026, it still can't reliably identify Khmer rhymes or consonance.)

The Story of the Lyricist's LexiconIn tenth grade, our Khmer teacher, apparently trying to meet her quota of two quizzes a month, told us to write a two-stanza poem that adhered to the meter Pad Kākagati (បទកាកគតិ). This ancient meter strictly prescribes the number of lines per stanza, the number of syllables per line, and the location of rhymes within stanzas.