The original comic: https://www.xkcd.com/1645/
Background - skip to Challenge if you want to win some SBD
There is a little bit of a grudge going on between myself and @moneyinfant... okay, maybe I am getting a little fed up with the fact that I couldn't find a writing contest that @moneyinfant doesn't know about.
I think it started about 10 or 11 days ago, when I noticed the writing contest list:
And then I saw the name pop up when I tried to comment on contests that were less than 3 hours old!
And then I kind of realized that maybe I was being manipulated into creating a contest myself...
And finally this was the straw that broke this camel's back:
So here's the deal, as you might have noticed from the comic in the beginning of the post and the title, a chiasmus is the word for making people sound witty and clever without saying much.
I first found out about the magic of 'chiasmus' from the Oxford English Dictionary's A word a day email. Apparently less people know about this word compared to the longest word in the English Dictionary, and I knew how to spell that word when I was in primary school!
Since then I discovered Dr Mardy Grothe's newsletter and books (http://www.drmardy.com/) and now whenever I get a chance I try to come up with one or two of my own and share the magic of this familiar yet not often recognized literary device to all language lovers.
Challenge
Are there language lovers from the @isleofwrite or people who are going to see this on @moneyinfant's list of writing contests that want to give it a go?
This is an explanation of what a chiasmus looks like from Wikipedia:
In rhetoric, chiasmus or, less commonly, chiasm (Latin term from Greek χίασμα, "crossing", from the Greek χιάζω, chiázō, "to shape like the letter Χ") is the figure of speech in which two or more phrases are presented, then presented again in reverse order to make a larger point. To diagram a simple chiasmus, the phrases are often labelled A B B A. For example, John F. Kennedy said, "ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country". The initial phrases your country:you are reversed in the second half of the sentence to you:your country. This is often used to urge the audience to reconsider the relationship between the repeated phrases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiasmus
Prize
The best three original chiasmuses about your experience on Steemit (as judged by me or the number of votes) will receive a minimum of 0.1 SBD from @fibrefox's account. This contest will run for one week from the day when this post is published.
Not your thing?
For other contests on Steemit, head over to @newbiegames to see the list of games and the 'featured' games of the week, or check out @moneyinfant's list of writing contests for more chances to use your writing skills and win SBD. Finally, @artz also maintains a comprehensive list of contests on Steemit.