antimetathesis
Etymology
From anti- + metathesis.
antimetathesis means the repetition of the same word in a sentence with a different meaning. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 87 out of 100.
Why “antimetathesis” is a great word
ANTIMETATHESIS — [Noun] A rhetorical device characterized either by repeating a word within a sentence with a shifted meaning, or by inverting the constituent parts of an antithesis. From the Greek prefix anti- ("against, opposite") + metathesis ("transposition, change of place"). Unlike antimetabole, which denotes a strict chiasmic reversal of grammatical order, or polyptoton, which concerns repetition through different inflected forms, antimetathesis trades in sly doublings and structural flips. It is the unsettling flicker when 'light' shifts from illumination to weightlessness, the inversion of 'we must eat to live' into 'not live to eat', and the politician's warning, 'We must all hang together, or we shall all hang separately'—a quiet proof that meaning turns on the axis of context, its truths rearranged in the dark.
noun
- The repetition of the same word in a sentence with a different meaning.
- The inversion of the parts of an antithesis, as in "A poem is a speaking picture; a picture, a mute poem" (Crabbe).