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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A rhetorical inversion of the second of two parallel structures, as in "Each throat/Was parched, and glazed each eye” ( Samuel Taylor Coleridge).

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. In rhetoric, the arrangement of repeated, parallel, or contrasted words or phrases in two pairs, the second of which reverses the order of the first: as, do not live to eat, but eat to live; or as in the following quotation

Wiktionary

  1. n. An inversion of the relationship between the elements of phrases

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. An inversion of the order of words or phrases, when repeated or subsequently referred to in a sentence.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. inversion in the second of two parallel phrases

Etymologies

  1. New Latin chīasmus, from Greek khīasmos, syntactic inversion, from khīazein, to invert or mark with an X; see chiasma.

Examples

  • “Had this been said by Gucci Mane, I'd use it as further evidence of his learning disability. hey i learned the word chiasmus posted by”

    MetaFilter

  • “But they slipped the code-word "chiasmus" into their conversation so that I could identify them.”

    SBL (Secret Bibliobloggers' League): A Top Secret Debriefing on the 2009 Annual Meeting in New Orleans

  • “In many pages of protracted rumination, Corngold intermixed his own insights with already enigmatic passages from Kafka, thus producing (often specious) effects of "chiasmus" yielding a "boundless field of incessant metaphorical exchange" (p. 121), a "free play between given metaphors which accommodates new metaphors at the same time that it robs each of determinate meaning" (p. 123), and "a movement of thought that spirals on through endless reversals" (p. 153).”

    'Kafka Up Close': An Exchange

  • “Chesterton ' s love of chiasmus — the ABBA pattern in which repetition involves reversal.”

    The Wall Street Journal: The Syntax of Style

  • “But while chiasmus and ellipsis were familiar, many of his terms were new to me.”

    The Wall Street Journal: The Syntax of Style

  • “Allegorizing poetic presence, Coleridge not only suggests that sound, like light, is a powerline through the air; he's also working with the chiasmus of sound as a phonological paradigm.”

    Sounding Romantic: The Sound of Sound

  • “According to Virginia Tenzer, the fact that only one taper at Urbino is lit suggests that this virtue is enacted in the present, at the chiasmus of the past and future, and "that prudence is a habit of mind exercised by Federico" (Iconography, 198).”

    Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro

  • “Once more Heidegger is careful when dealing with this “reversal” Umkehrung: Here the chiasmus can no longer play out since we have arrived at the central point where the four branches are crossed, at the simple point without dimension that sheds light without being itself part of the clearing.”

    Archive 2009-05-01

  • “Catullus then goes on to refer to Furius and Aurelius, the addressees of the poem with the lovely chiasmus: “Aureli pathice et cinaede Furi.””

    Archive 2009-11-01

  • “If we were to delve into the vertiginous levels of emptiness progressively proclaimed in this chiasmus, this essay would be many times its current length.”

    Hegel on Buddhism

Show 10 more examples...

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  • tbtabby "Eat to live, don't live to eat." -Cicero Jan 27, 2010
  • jaime_d From "A Field of Snow on a Slope of the Rosenberg" by Guy Davenport. Jan 19, 2010
  • youanden Examples:
    Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. - John F. Kennedy

    Fair is foul, and foul is fair. - William Shakespeare

    Never let a fool kiss you--or a kiss fool you. Jun 8, 2009
  • pterodactyl ♩I might be drunk, but at least I'm not insaaaaaane! ♩ Apr 24, 2009
  • chained_bear But he's really old and crusty now.
    ;)

    I'd rather have a bottle in front of me
    Than have to have a frontal lobotomyyyyy.... Apr 24, 2009
  • rolig But don't forget what Heraclitus said: "Character is destiny." Apr 24, 2009
  • bilby "the plot doesn't drive the characters, the characters drive the plot."
    ... dangerous. Just as you say something like this, along will come a precociously talented storyteller to turn convention on its head. Apr 24, 2009
  • seanahan Wow chained_bear, that may be the deepest statement every made on Wordie. I'm trying to wrap my head around the implications of fantasy and reality and how people live their lives. Consider my mind blown. Apr 24, 2009
  • chained_bear Indeed. For many people (perhaps sadly), that's the difference between fiction and life. Apr 23, 2009
  • tbtabby When writing fiction, bear in mind: the plot doesn't drive the characters, the characters drive the plot. Apr 23, 2009
  • recombinantdna A really good example from Wikipedia:

    "Swift as an arrow flying, fleeing like a hare afraid"

    adjective, simile, gerund, gerund, simile, adjective
    (A B C C B A); subtler that the other examples here, but you can see how much more powerful it is than the "parallel form" (A B C A B C):
    "Swift as an arrow flying, afraid like a hare fleeing."
    Feb 14, 2009
  • sionnach Seanahan has triggered an indelible memory. Though it was my mother who had the musical talent in the family, my Dad would regularly bring down the house with his rendition of "The Charladies' Ball". Here is the chorus.

    CHORUS: At the Charladies' Ball said one and all,
    "You're the belle of the ball, Mrs. Mulligan."
    We had one-steps and two-steps and the divil knows what new steps.
    We swore that we never would be dull again, by dad.
    We had wine, porter and Jameson. We had cocoa and all.
    We had champagne that night but real pains next morning,
    The night that we danced at the Charladies' Ball.

    Full lyrics can be found here:
    http://www.black-brothers.com/songs/26.htm Oct 18, 2007
  • reesetee Right. What fbharjo said. *arms crossed* Oct 18, 2007
  • seanahan I want real pain for my sham friends and champagne for my real friends. Oct 18, 2007
  • chained_bear Oh. Well... *head hurts* Oct 18, 2007
  • fbharjo Reseetee - That course of - of course that ???? yes sey Oct 18, 2007
  • reesetee I think fbharjo was riffing on the word's etymology, yes fb? I've noticed that you enjoy doing that. :-) Oct 18, 2007
  • chained_bear Well, if you bracket it in your comment (can you still edit it?) then we could all click there whenever we get to this page. That'd be cool. :)

    I think this word is a little more elegant though.

    Also, reading the wiki page for this word makes my head hurt. It's lucky I don't have to understand Latin poetry for any conceivable reason... Oct 18, 2007
  • fbharjo chiastic was posted long ago. What a double cross!!!!! Oct 18, 2007
  • skipvia If you want to head off a balanced attack by your enemy, you must balance a tack hammer on your head.

    Close, anyway... Oct 18, 2007
  • chained_bear Love it! Can't think of any good ones though... Wait! "Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country." Is that one? Oct 18, 2007
  • uselessness Don't let a kiss fool you, or a fool kiss you. Oct 18, 2007
  • seanahan I can't believe nobody has posted this.

    I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy. Oct 18, 2007

‘chiasmus’ has been looked up 2913 times, loved by 12 people, added to 86 lists, commented on 23 times, and has a Scrabble score of 15.