antimetabole
Sign in to saveIn rhetoric, antimetabole ( ) is the repetition of words in successive clauses, but in transposed order; for example, "I know what I like, and I like what I know". It is related to, and sometimes considered a special case of, chiasmus.
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- Subclass of
- repetition
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- different from
- epanodos
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Encyclopedic overview
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In rhetoric, antimetabole ( ) is the repetition of words in successive clauses, but in transposed order; for example, "I know what I like, and I like what I know". It is related to, and sometimes considered a special case of, chiasmus.
An antimetabole can be predictive, because it is easy to reverse the terms. It may trigger deeper reflection than merely stating one half of the line.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “antimetabole” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.