Is there a name for inverting word order to accomplish a different meaning?


There are many sayings that invert the word order to convey a different meaning.


e.g.



  • "Do you live to work or do you work to live?"

  • "He who fails to plan, plans to fail"


Is there a name for this type of saying?



Answer



Antimetabole is I think what you’re after:



In rhetoric, antimetabole … 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.



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