Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

X marks the spot in chiasmus. Certain chiastic statements, such as "All for one and one for all," and the shortened Cicero quote "Eat to live not live to eat," are word palindromes where the words, when repeated in reverse order read identically. In fact, the rhetorical elements of chiasmus are always rendered in palindromic order, usually of the "ABBA" schema but sometimes longer. This order can be seen in the above Mae West quote, in which the rhetorical order is men-life-life-men. In Genesis 9:6, we have a longer structure - "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed" - in which the pattern is ABCCBA.