Antimetabole  

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In rhetoric, antimetabole (Template:IPAc-en Template:Respell) is the repetition of words in successive clauses, but in transposed order (e.g., "I know what I like, and I like what I know"). It is similar to chiasmus although chiasmus does not use repetition of the same words or phrases.

Examples

• "Eat to live, not live to eat." Attributed to Socrates
• Latin: Miser ex potente fiat ex misero potens Seneca the Younger, Thyestes, Act I.10 (let it make misery from power and power from misery).
• "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961.
• "He who questions training only trains himself at asking questions." The Sphinx, Mystery Men (1999)
• "You stood up for America, now America must stand up for you." Barack Obama - December 14, 2011.
• "I go where I please, and I please where I go." - Attributed to Duke Nukem
• "With my mind on my money and my money on my mind."- Attributed to Snoop Dogg in the song Gin & Juice
• "In America, you can always find a party. In Soviet Russia, Party always finds you!" - Yakov Smirnoff
• "If you fail to plan, plan to fail."
• "The further I get from the things that I care about, the less I care about how much further away I get." - Robert Smith of The Cure ("Fear of Ghosts")
• "The great object of [Hamlet's] life is defeated by continually resolving to do, yet doing nothing but resolve." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Shakespeare's Hamlet
• "We do what we like and we like what we do." - Andrew W.K., "Party Hard"
• "Failing to prepare is preparing to fail." - John Wooden
• "We didn't land on Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock landed on us." - Malcolm X, Malcolm X
• "If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with." --Billy Preston
• "I meant what I said, and I said what I meant." --Dr. Seuss, Horton Hatches the Egg

Etymology

It is derived from the Greek ἀντιμεταβολή from ἀντί (antí), "against, opposite" and μεταβολή (metabolē), "turning about, change".

See also

• Figure of speech
• Rhetoric
• Russian reversal
• Chiasmus