Sentence examples for chiasmus from inspiring English sources

Inversion, circumlocution, alliteration, assonance, chiasmus, paradox: there's nothing he doesn't go in for.

Ask not what you can do for chiasmus, then: ask what chiasmus can do for you.

And the paired lines look attractive on the page because of the chiasmus, more easily seen than heard: it adds a playful touch.

It's here we see the horrible symmetry of the sexual logic of sonnets, a kind of little chiasmus with a half-twist: with the Young Man he's in the grip of a pure love, but stalked by the presence of lust; with the Dark Lady he's in the grip of a pure lust, but stalked by the absence of love.

The answer is chiasmus (pronounced ki-AZ-mus), and if that means nothing to you, don't worry – it's terribly simple.

And it really is that way around because, whereas Shakespeare was taught these things in school (chiasmus and the other figures of rhetoric were an essential part of the Elizabethan grammar school syllabus), Bruce had to come up with his catchphrase through pure inspiration.

But doing so has never been as simple or as uncontested as his neatly balanced chiasmus implies.

The cross-stitch of chiasmus is particularly favoured in Sonnet 30.

This ringing statement has been refined and rethought over the years – as in Huw Wheldon's famous chiasmus about making the good popular and the popular good.

The third stanza creates a kind of extended chiasmus.

In terms of formal rhetoric, it's a near-antimetabole or chiasmus (7) – bookended by the verb "move" in first active then passive voice.