Talk:chiasmus

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the definition for chiasmus includes what appears to be a quote from someone named Goldsmith:

An inversion of the relationship between the elements of phrases, e.g. To stop too fearful, and too faint to go -- Goldsmith."

And the author's name is linked to an article which appears to me to have nothing to do with the author, but rather refers to craftsmen who work with gold.

And is the quote correct? I suspect it should be "Too fearful to stop..." rather than "To stop too fearful..." but I don't know really.

"To stop too fearful" is the example of chiasmus. It means "too fearful to stop", but if you write it "too fearful to stop", then you have no example. —Stephen 00:58, 19 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]


Goldsmith is Oliver Goldsmith and can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Goldsmith

Quote is from "The Traveller", which can be found at: http://www.uoregon.edu/~rbear/goldsmith2.html

My understanding (limited) is that the sense intended was: stop appears before fearful; whereas go appears after faint thus the word order is inverted. --TonyLF 15:42, 28 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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