Wise Wednesday Grammar: Figures of Speech (Antimetabole)

Figure of speech.

SCHEMES.

Antimetabole 

In rhetoric, antimetabole (pron.: /æntɨməˈtæbəliː/ an-ti-mə-tab-ə-lee) is the repetition of words in successive clauses, but in transposed grammatical 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"
  
  

Etymology 

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

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