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Articles tagged with: latin

Chiasmus--named after a letter

bolstering the cliche

Chiasmus--named after a letter

We love our cliches and jingles, but there's something really satisfying about words and phrases that step out and step back, are mirror images of themselves--"level"--"radar"--"madam I'm Adam." These are palindromes, which means (in Greek) that they "run backward." In Latin the word would be "retrocourse."

But "it is what it is" isn't quite a palindrome, and so "palindrome" is not the word for this spell.
The word is "chiasmus"--a word named after a letter.

Comments -- Are Live -- Word of the Week

there's no such thing as "start at the beginning"

Comments -- Are Live -- Word of the Week

My beautiful new blog is still a new blog, and I'm still learning its outlines and characters. A couple days ago, I discovered, quite by accident, that there was a comment box--with comments in it awaiting my approval!

Comments are now live; please post comments!

And so, with humble apologies to those commenters, this post is all about comments, the word and the abstract object.

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