From TheBestLinks.com
Chiasmus is a figure of speech based on inverted parallelism. It's a rhetorical figure in which a pair of clauses are related to one another through a reversal of terms, in order to make a larger point.
- Perhaps the most famous example of chiasmus is a quote by John F. Kennedy from his inaugural address: "...ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.
- Jimmy Carter used it in his presidential farewell address: America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it is the other way round. Human rights invented America. [1] (http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.org/documents/speeches/farewell.phtml)
- Dwight D. Eisenhower used chiasmus in a January 1958 speech to the Republican National Committee: What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog.
- A less-presidential example is from Mae West in I'm No Angel (1933): Well, it's not the men in your life that counts, it's the life in your men.
Chiasmus dates back to the Bible. For example, in Genesis 9:6, there is the following: Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed." An even earlier example is this from Croesus, dating back to the 6th century BC: In peace sons bury their fathers, but in war fathers bury their sons.
Chiasmus is not limited to an exchange of words; it can also involve the exchange of letters or syllables:
Chiasmus can sometimes be implied, as when Kermit the Frog says "Time's fun when you're having flies" or Mae West says "A hard man is good to find."
The term derives its name from the X-shaped Greek letter chi (χ).
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