CHI Marks the Spot

Ever Heard of Chiasmus?

Chiasmus is one of those parts of speech you didn`t know even had a name. What is it?
It`s a figure of speech in which the order of the words in the first if two parallel clauses is reversed in the second, which gives it extra power or wit.
Here are some examples:

" Ask not what your country can do for you;ask what you can do for your country"
John F. Kennedy
" It`s not the men in my life, it`s the life in my men"
Mae West

Get the idea?
Chiasmus(pronounced kye-AZ-muss)is named after the Greek letter chi (x), and indicates a crisscross arrangement of phrases. More examples

" Pleasure is a sin and sometime sin is a pleasure"
Lord Byron
" The value of marriage is not theat adult produce children, but that children
produce adults"
Peter De Vries

Certain Chiasmus, such as " All for one and one for all", and the shortened Cicero quote " Eat to live , not live to eat" are also word palindromes--where the words, when repeated in reverse order, read identically.
Chiasmuses appeared to reveal hidden truths and are popular in BiBlical writing:
" Whoever sheds the blood of man; by man shall his blood be shed"
(Genesis 9:6)
" There is no fear in love; but perfect love castest out fear"
( 1 John 4:18)
" Many that are first shall be the last; and the last shall be first"
(Matthew 19:30)

The two lines can express contradictory sentiments,as in the French proverbs
" Loves makes time pass; time makes love pass"--the first line is romantic and the second line is ironic. Ernest Hemingway was fond of asking people which of these two statement they preferred :
" Man can be destroyed but not defeated" or "Man can be defeated but not destroyed"Stand on your side, fellas

A chiasmus can also be implied. Oscar Wilde was a master at thus type of ironic wordplay. Some of his classics:
" Work is the curse of the drinking class" and " The English have a miraculous power of turning wine into water"Other implied chiasmus quips include Mae West`s lines " A hard man is good to find"and " A waist is terrible thing to mind", Groucho`s lines "Time wounds all heel" and Kermit the Frog`s observatation that " Time`s fun when you`re having flies"A hangover has been described as " the wrath of grapes" and a critic who provided a harsh opening night review was said to have " stoned the first cast".

Had enough? Finally, consider the chiasmus contest held by The Washington Post some years ago, the winning entry read:
Bill Clinton before :" I don`t know how I can make this any clearer."
Bill Clinton after :" I don`t know how I can clear this with my Maker."

My personal favorite one is quoted somewhere sometime somehow:
" Life is easy when you played it hard and life is hard when you played it easy"