The hysteron proteron (from the , ''hýsteron próteron'', "later earlier") is a

rhetoric Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse ( trivium) along with grammar and logic/ dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or w ...

al device. It occurs when the first key word of the idea refers to something that happens temporally later than the second key word. The goal is to call attention to the more important idea by placing it first. The standard example comes from the ''

Aeneid The ''Aeneid'' ( ; or ) is a Latin Epic poetry, epic poem that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Troy, Trojan who fled the Trojan War#Sack of Troy, fall of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Ancient Rome ...

'' of

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; 15 October 70 BC21 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Rome, ancient Roman poet of the Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Augustan period. He composed three of the most fa ...

: "''Moriamur, et in media arma ruamus''" ("Let us die, and charge into the thick of the fight"; ii. 353). An example of hysteron proteron encountered in everyday life is the common reference to putting on one's "shoes and socks", rather than "socks and shoes". By this deliberate reversal, hysteron proteron draws attention to the important point, so giving it primacy. Hysteron proteron is a form of

hyperbaton Hyperbaton , in its original meaning, is a figure of speech in which a phrase is made discontinuous by the insertion of other words.Andrew M. Devine, Laurence D. Stephens, ''Latin Word Order: Structured Meaning and Information'' (Oxford: Oxford Un ...

, which describes general rearrangements of the sentence. It can also be defined as a figure of speech consisting of the reversal of a natural or rational order (as in "then came the thunder and the lightning").

Example from the Quran

An example from the

Quran The Quran, also Romanization, romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a Waḥy, revelation directly from God in Islam, God (''Allah, Allāh''). It is organized in 114 chapters (, ) which ...

that demonstrates hysteron proteron, verse (aya) number 89–90 from

Sura A ''surah'' (; ; ) is an Arabic word meaning 'chapter' in the Quran. There are 114 ''suwar'' in the Quran, each divided into verses (). The ''suwar'' are of unequal length; the shortest ''surah'' ( al-Kawthar) has only three verses, while the ...

Number 21 says that God granted Zechariah's prayer for a son even though Zechariah was very old and his wife was sterile: A more conventional phrasing would be: "We granted his prayer; we made his wife fertile for him; and aving done sowe gave him John." The reversal of the expected sequence (hysteron proteron) in the verse suggests immediacy: Zechariah's prayer was granted without any delay at all, so much so that the detail itself, ''"We made his wife fertile for him,"'' was not allowed to intervene between the prayer and its acceptance.Literature and the Quran, Encyclopaedia Of The Quran

References

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Example from the Quran

See also

References