Antimetabole
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In rhetoric, antimetabole is the repetition of words in successive clauses, but in transposed grammatical order (ex: "I know what I like, and like what I know"). It is similar to chiasmus although chiasmus does not use repetition of the same words or phrases.
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[edit] Examples
- Latin: Miser ex potente fiat ex misero potens Seneca the Younger, Thyestes, Act I.10 (let it make misery from power and power from misery).
- The Latinate expression of Parmenides philosophical thesis of immutability is rendered "Ex nihilo nihil fit" (from nothing nothing comes).
- "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961.
- "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." Jesus (Mark 2:27)
- "Johnson having now explicitly avowed his opinion of Lord Chesterfield, did not refrain from expressing himself concerning that nobleman with pointed freedom: 'This man (said he) I thought had been a Lord among wits; but, I find, he is only a wit among Lords!' " James Boswell Life of Johnson
- "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." Winston Churchill, The Lord Mayor's Luncheon, Mansion House, November 10, 1942.
- "We didn't land on Plymouth Rock, the rock was landed on us." Malcolm X, The Ballot or the Bullet, Washington Heights, NY, March 29, 1964.
- "I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful, one hundred percent!" Dr. Seuss, Horton Hatches an Egg.
- To be kissed by a fool is stupid; To be fooled by a kiss is worse. Ambrose Redmoon.
- "Nice to see you, to see you nice" Bruce Forsyth
- Many rhetorical figures in the writing of Karl Marx exhibit antimetabole or chiasmus. For example, his critique of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's The Philosophy of Poverty titled The Poverty of Philosophy contains such an inversion by reference. Similarly, in the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx wrote: "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness".
- Dorothy Parker famously elided an antimetabole when she explained a tardy submission with "too fucking busy, and vice versa."
It is derived from the Greek anti ("against","in opposite direction") and metabole ("turning about").
[edit] References
- Corbett, Edward P.J. Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. Oxford University Press, New York, 1971.
