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Symploce is two or more sentences / phrases sharing the same beginning and end, but a different middle, while I'm looking for two or more sentences / phrases sharing a middle but different beginnings and ends.

Such as in the question:

A is to B, as C is to what?

And

Roses are red, violets are blue

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  • Your examples just display parallelism; there’s no rhetorical force involved. Oct 29 at 14:45

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Mesodiplosis is according to Wikipedia "the repetition of a word or phrase at the middle of every clause". It's quite an uncommon term: it's not in Merriam-Webster online dictionary for instance. But you can find it e.g. in Brigham Young U's compilation of rhetorical terms "Silva Rhetoricae", which gives an example of the repetition of "not" or "but not" from 2 Corinthians 4:8-9

We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.

It contrasts with anaphora (repetition at the beginning of a clause) and epistrophe (repetition at the end of a clause): the previously-mentioned Wikipedia article on repetition has a list of other terms.

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