The reversible raincoat or how I learned to stop worrying and love antimetabole

Posted 3 years ago by Bear

The reversible raincoat is the nickname speechwriters have given to the rhetorical device in which words are repeated in transposed order, as with Churchill's famous line: "Let us preach what we practice—let us practice what we preach." The fancy Greek name for the trick is antimetabole.

It's very popular in this years election cycle.

On a related note, my least favorite business cliche is "working hard or hardly working?"

1 Comments

dave ~ 3 years ago

I blame 80% of work related cliche's on Mike Judge and Ron Livingston. The other 20% I blame on Family Guy. The point here? Work related cliches almost always end up in someone getting punched in the oh-noes.

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