Why this word is great
ANTIMETABOLE — [Noun] A rhetorical device involving the repetition of a phrase in reverse order to create contrast or emphasis. From Ancient Greek ἀντιμεταβολή (antimetabolḗ), from ἀντί (anti, "opposite") + μεταβολή (metabolḗ, "transformation"). Unlike "chiasmus" (which inverts ideas without exact repetition) or "anadiplosis" (which merely echoes a word forward), antimetabole is a mirror held up to language itself. It is Kennedy’s "Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country," the taut snap of a proverb like "Eat to live, not live to eat," or the sly inversion of Wilde’s "Work is the curse of the drinking classes"—each a verbal palindrome, where meaning shifts like light through a prism. The mind delights in symmetry, even as it unravels.