Antistrophe
The repetition of the same word or phrase at the end of successive clauses.
Antistrophe is the mirror of anaphora. Where anaphora repeats words at the beginning of successive clauses, antistrophe repeats them at the end. The effect is a rhythmic closing, a drumbeat landing on the same syllable.
The figure is common in biblical poetry, liturgy, and political oratory. It gives a sequence of clauses a shared destination, so that the final word gathers weight from everything that led up to it. 'When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child' (1 Corinthians 13:11) uses both anaphora and antistrophe.
Antistrophe works best when the repeated word is the idea you want to leave with the reader. If the repeated word is only a grammatical necessity, the figure becomes mechanical.
Common mistake: forcing the repetition by twisting syntax. The clauses should feel natural; the repeated ending should feel like the natural place to stop, not a contrived echo.
“In 1960, the country dreamed of the moon; in 1980, it dreamed of tax cuts; in 2020, it dreamed of the moon again.”
Keep reading the glossary
The deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the start of successive clauses.
A figure of speech that repeats the same word or phrase at the end of successive clauses.
A figure in which each clause begins with the same word and ends with the same word — anaphora and epistrophe combined.
A rhetorical scheme in which successive clauses have the same length and grammatical structure.