Antimetabole
A rhetorical figure that repeats words in reverse grammatical order to reverse the sense.
Antimetabole is a figure of speech in which a phrase is repeated with its key words in reverse order, so that the reversal itself becomes the argument. Its Greek root means 'turning about', and the figure has been prized since antiquity because the reversal is memorable, easy to teach, and hard to argue with; it sounds, to the ear, as if it has already been proven.
The figure is close to chiasmus but stricter: antimetabole demands that the same words return in reversed order, while chiasmus only demands that the grammatical structure be mirrored. Every antimetabole is a chiasmus; not every chiasmus is an antimetabole. Kennedy's 'Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country' is the classic English example.
In careful writing, antimetabole is best kept for the moment when the reversal actually reveals something. Overused, it becomes a party trick that flatters both the writer and the audience without adding an idea. A single well-placed antimetabole can carry a whole speech; a paragraph of them makes the speaker sound clever and mistrustable.
“Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”
Keep reading the glossary
An ABBA word-order reversal — 'ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country'.
The deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the start of successive clauses.
The art of persuasive speaking and writing — the discipline behind every great quoted line.
A short, sharp statement that compresses a truth or observation into a single line.