From Richard Nordquist,
Your Guide to Grammar & Composition.
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Definition:

A verbal pattern (a type of antithesis) in which the second half of an expression is balanced against the first with the parts reversed. Essentially the same as antimetabole. (Note that a chiasmus includes anadiplosis, but not every anadiplosis reverses itself in the manner of a chiasmus.) The adjectival form is chiastic. See Chiasmus on the Campaign Trail.

Etymology:

From the Greek, "to invert" or "mark with the letter X."

Examples & Observations:

• "I flee who chases me, and chase who flees me."
  (Ovid)



• "Fair is foul, and foul is fair."
  (William Shakespeare, Macbeth I.i)



• "Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good."
  (Samuel Johnson)



• "If black men have no rights in the eyes of the white men, of course the whites can have none in the eyes of the blacks."
  (Frederick Douglass, "An Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage")



• "The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order."
  (Alfred North Whitehead)



• "I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me."
  (Winston Churchill)



• "The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults."
  (Peter De Vries)



• "Don't sweat the petty things--and don't pet the sweaty things."
  (anonymous)



• "You can take it out of the country, but you can't take the country out of it."
  (slogan for Salem cigarettes)



• "Friendly Americans win American friends."
  (United States Travel Service, 1963)



• "Never let a fool kiss you--or a kiss fool you."
  (anonymous)



• "Nice to see you, to see you, nice!"
  (British TV entertainer Bruce Forsyth)



• "Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done."
  (George W. Bush)



• "I am stuck on Band-Aid, and Band-Aid's stuck on me."
  (advertising jingle for Band-Aid bandages)

Pronunciation: ki-AZ-mus

Also Known As: antimetabole, epanodos