Chiasmus
Pattern
AB→BA — reversed structure (not necessarily same words)
Definition
Reversal of grammatical structures in successive phrases or clauses, creating an X-shaped (ABBA) pattern.
Examples
Example 1
By day the frolic, and the dance by night.
Samuel Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes
The structure inverts from time-then-activity to activity-then-time without repeating exact words
Example 2
Pleasure's a sin, and sometimes sin's a pleasure.
Lord Byron, Don Juan
The grammatical structure reverses — subject and predicate swap roles
Example 3
Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get.
Attributed to various
Grammatical inversion of "getting/want" to "wanting/get" creates a conceptual mirror
AI Detection Note
Rare in AI text. LLMs default to parallel (ABAB) rather than chiastic (ABBA) structure because parallel patterns are far more common in training data.
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