Hysteron Proteron
Reversing the natural order of events, putting what happened later first.
Hysteron proteron (Greek: 'the later earlier') states the second of two events before the first. Virgil's 'moriamur et in media arma ruamus' — 'let us die and rush into the thick of the fight' — is the classical model: the outcome is named before the action that causes it.
The figure is not a mistake. Placing the consequence first reproduces the speaker's psychology, where the thing that matters most surfaces before the sequence that produced it. It also creates urgency, because the sentence arrives at its own cause after the reader has already accepted its effect.
It is distinct from anastrophe, which reverses word order within a phrase, and from prolepsis, which treats a future state as already true. Hysteron proteron reverses events, not syntax.
Common mistake: reversing an order the reader needs in sequence, such as instructions. In procedural writing the figure produces genuine confusion rather than emphasis.
“Let us die and charge into the thick of the fight.”
Keep reading the glossary
A rhetorical figure that inverts normal word order for emphasis, formality, or characterisation.
Anticipating and answering an objection before the audience raises it.
A figure that displaces a word from its expected position for emphasis or rhythm — 'This I must see.'
Interlocking word order — an ABAB arrangement that braids two ideas together.