0

I think this is a bit of an anachronism, but sometimes in nursery rhymes or songs you'll hear sentences in which an adjective describing a noun is moved to be after the noun it describes, and I was wondering if there's a specific term for this. Examples:

"The little sheep black" instead of "The little black sheep"

"The virgin pure" instead of "The pure virgin"

4

1 Answer 1

1

It's a form of inversion, also known as an anastrophe.

Inversion, also known as “anastrophe,” is a literary technique in which the normal order of words is reversed, in order to achieve a particular effect of emphasis or meter.

2
  • Be careful: in some contexts the term inversion refers only to placing the sentence's verb before that verb's subject, not to the rearrangement of any other syntactic elements.
    – tchrist
    Commented Jun 17, 2019 at 19:43
  • @tchrist Thanks, the reference at the link cites that case.
    – Gnawme
    Commented Jun 17, 2019 at 20:04

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .