chiastic

• Rhymes: -æstɪk

chiastic (comparative more chiastic, superlative most chiastic)

1. Pertaining to chiasmus.
   • 1981 , John W. Welch, Chiasmus In Ancient Greek and Latin Literatures, John W. Welch (editor), Chiasmus in Antiquity, 2020, Wipf and Stock, page 261,

     In the Aeneid, Vergil uses chiasmus in order to make his poetry smoother and more picturesque. Many lines could be quoted in which a chiastic order of words was necessary to maintain the dactylic hexameter.

   • 2009 , William E. Engel, Chiastic Designs in English Literature from Sidney to Shakespeare, 2016, Taylor & Francis (Routledge), page 22,

     Looking at David in this way has more to do with mnemotechnics than chiasmus, and yet the process by which earlier themes attach themselves to David and then are rendered differently by the poets does bespeak a movement that bears an affinity with the chiastic pattern of presenting something in a set order only to play it back differently so as to imbue it with different implications.

2. (by extension) Pertaining to the position of two things relative to one another.
   • 1986, Xavier Léon-Dufour, translated by Terrence Prendergast, Life and Death in the New Testament, Harper & Row, page 112:

     A chiastic⁹⁸ plotting of the passage illustrates beyond doubt that the disciple has to be identified with the Master.

   • 2003, Shakespearean Criticism, Volume 78, Gale Research, page 52:

     Immediately one realizes that Bonjour's and Braunmuller's idea of chiastic plotting in King John bears no resemblance to the standard definition of rhetorical chiasmus: the falling character King John and the rising character Philip Faulconbridge could theoretically be said to cross paths at one point […] .