anastrophe

Borrowed from Ancient Greek ἀναστροφή (anastrophḗ), from ἀνα- (ana-, “up”) + στρέφω (stréphō, “to turn”).

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /əˈnæstɹəfi/
• Hyphenation: anas‧tro‧phe
• Rhymes: -æstɹəfi

anastrophe (countable and uncountable, plural anastrophes)

1. (rhetoric) Unusual word order, often involving an inversion of the usual pattern of the sentence.

   Synonyms: hyperbaton, inversion

   Hypernym: word order

   • 1835, L[arret] Langley, “[Rhetorical Figures.] Anastrophe.”, in A Manual of the Figures of Rhetoric, […], Doncaster, South Yorkshire: […] C. White, […], →OCLC, page 43:

     Anastrophe often, by a pleasing change,
     Gracefuly puts last the words that first should range.

   • 1910, George Meredith, chapter XII, in Celt and Saxon‎^[1]:

     […] 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.

• anastrophic
• anastrophism

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anastrophe f (plural anastrophes)

1. anastrophe

• “anastrophe”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.