Chiasmus
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 An inversion of the relationship between the elements of phrases. countable, rhetoric, uncountable
"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[…]"
- 2 inversion in the second of two parallel phrases wordnet
Example
More examples"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[…]"
Etymology
From Ancient Greek χῑασμός (khīasmós), from χῑάζω (khīázō, “to mark with an X”), from χ (kh, “chi”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.