[kahy-az-muh
s] 
[-mahy] . Rhetoric. | a reversal in the order of words in two otherwise parallel phrases, as in “He went to the country, to the town went she.” |
| chi·as·mus (kī-āz'məs) n. pl. chi·as·mi (-mī') A rhetorical inversion of the second of two parallel structures, as in "Each throat/Was parched, and glazed each eye" (Samuel Taylor Coleridge). [New Latin chīasmus, from Greek khīasmos, syntactic inversion, from khīazein, to invert or mark with an X; see chiasma.] |