Chiasmus
An ABBA word-order reversal — 'ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country'.
Chiasmus is a rhetorical figure in which the second half of a sentence reverses the order of the words in the first half. The name comes from the Greek letter chi (X), whose crossed strokes diagram the structure.
Kennedy's inaugural — 'Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country' — is the canonical modern example. Older examples include 'The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath' and 'When the going gets tough, the tough get going.'
Chiasmus produces a satisfying click in the ear because the reversal feels both inevitable and witty. It is one of the few rhetorical figures that work equally well in print and in speech.
“Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”
Keep reading the glossary
The deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the start of successive clauses.
A grammatical balance of two opposed ideas — 'to be or not to be'.
The art of persuasive speaking and writing — the discipline behind every great quoted line.
Aristotle's three modes of persuasion — character, emotion, and reason.