Entry tags:
Mo's Rather Interesting World of Figures of Speech and Other Rhetorical Devices
#1 in an occasional series -- your challenge is to use it at least once today.
Literally, something like "latter first".
Means: transposing the natural order of concepts in a sentence, ie. putting the cart before the horse. An example from Shakespeare: "Th' Antoniad, the Egyptian admiral,/ With all their sixty, fly and turn the rudder" -- actually they turn the rudder and then fly, but this way round it supposedly has more rhetorical force (and better fits the scansion).
I don't think people really use this device these days, it feels rather forced. I guess a related modern practice though is for the second concept to be a modifying clause, eg "I'm going home, after I send this email" rather than the natural sequence "I'll send this email, then I'm going home" -- the effect is to emphasize the going home, and to suggest that the email is less important.
Hysteron proteron
Literally, something like "latter first".
Means: transposing the natural order of concepts in a sentence, ie. putting the cart before the horse. An example from Shakespeare: "Th' Antoniad, the Egyptian admiral,/ With all their sixty, fly and turn the rudder" -- actually they turn the rudder and then fly, but this way round it supposedly has more rhetorical force (and better fits the scansion).
I don't think people really use this device these days, it feels rather forced. I guess a related modern practice though is for the second concept to be a modifying clause, eg "I'm going home, after I send this email" rather than the natural sequence "I'll send this email, then I'm going home" -- the effect is to emphasize the going home, and to suggest that the email is less important.