Hysteron proteron
figure of speech reversing a natural or rational order
The hysteron proteron (from the Greek: ὕστερον πρότερον, hýsteron próteron, "later earlier") is a rhetorical 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 of Virgil: "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, 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 that demonstrates hysteron proteron, verse (aya) number 89–90 from Sura Number 21 says that God granted Zechariah's prayer for a son even though Zechariah was very old and his wife was sterile:
We granted his prayer and gave him John, and we made his wife fertile for him.
“Hysteron proteron” enters the record as figure of speech reversing a natural or rational order. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Hysteron, proteron and figure can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 25, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q591227. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hysteron proteron” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.