Chiasmus

Chiasmus is a stylistic figure consisting in the mirror-like, crosswise arrangement of the parallel members of two adjacent segments of speech: if in the first the order of elements is direct (AB), in the second it is reversed (BA). The name derives from the Greek letter "chi" (Χ), whose shape symbolises the crossing. Chiasmus creates a symmetrical, closed composition of the phrase, emphasises the semantic opposition or identity of its parts and lends the utterance an aphoristic, chiselled quality ("We eat to live, not live to eat"). This figure is widely used in proverbs, maxims, oratorical speech and poetry. Chiasmus belongs to the figures of syntactic parallelism and demonstrates how the symmetry of construction can become an independent means of artistic expressiveness.