anastrophe
nounUS, UK /əˈnæstɹəfi/
Etymology Borrowed from Ancient Greek ἀναστροφή (anastrophḗ), from ἀνα- (ana-, “up”) + στρέφω (stréphō, “to turn”).
1
Rhetoric Unusual word order, often involving an inversion of the usual pattern of the sentence.
- Anastrophe often, by a pleasing change, Gracefuly puts last the words that first should range.1835, L[arret] Langley, “[Rhetorical Figures.] Anastrophe.”, in A Manual of the Figures of Rhetoric, […], Doncaster, South Yorkshire: […] C. White, […], →OCLC, page 43:
- […] thus the foreign-born baby was denounced and welcomed, the circumstances lamented and the mother congratulated, in a breath, all under cover of the happiest misunderstanding, as effective as the cabalism of Prospero's wand among the Neapolitan mariners, by the skilful Irish development on a grand scale of the rhetorical figure anastrophe, or a turning about and about.1910, George Meredith, chapter XII, in Celt and Saxon:
- Related terms
- anastrophic, anastrophism, antimetabole, chiasmus, SVO, SOV, OSV, VSO, VOS, Yodaspeak