chiasmus

Etymology

From Latin chiasmus, from Ancient Greek χιασμός (khiasmós), from χιάζω (khiázō, “to mark with a chi”), from χ (kh, “chi”)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kaɪˈæzməs/

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Noun

chiasmus (plural chiasmi or chiasmuses)

1. (rhetoric) An inversion of the relationship between the elements of phrases.
   • 1934, H. H. Walker & N. W. Lund "The Literary Structure of the Book of Habakkuk", Journal of Biblical Literature 53 (4): 355.

     The book of Habakkuk has been discovered to consist of a closely knit chiastic structure throughout. This is the first poem of such length to stand revealed as a literary unit of this kind, though chiasmus has already been discovered throughout many psalms […]

   • 1984, Ethel Grodzins Romm, "Persuasive Writing", American Bar Association Journal 70: 158.

     John F. Kennedy is more famous for his chiasmus than for many of his policies:
     "Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country."

   • 2002, Simon R. Slings, "Figures of Speech in Aristophanes", in Andreas Willi (editor), The Language of Greek Comedy, pages 103-104

     Leeman therefore holds that chiasmus is the basic order in Greek and Latin: antithesis is, he claims, normal for the modern, rational mind, but for the Greeks and Romans chiasmus was more natural.

   • 2009, Seyed Ghahreman Safavi & Simon Weightman, Rūmī's Mystical Design: Reading the Mathnawī, Book One, page 46:

     The realization that Mawlānā was using parallelism and chiasmus to organize the higher levels of his work has been a major surprise.

Further reading

• chiasmus on Wikipedia.Wikipedia