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retrograde couplet

Form
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Couplet lines that reverse structure or word order while maintaining sense

Detailed Definition
A retrograde couplet is a rhymed pair of lines that reverses the syntactic or semantic order of a prior couplet, creating mirror imagery or inverted logic; this technique explores duality, regret, or cyclical time by presenting a thought and its undoing within a tightly bound formal unit.
Example
Example in poetry:
Line A: My love's a flower, fair and sweet; Line B (with a thematic return): A sweet perfume that I will often meet; The first line is about a flower's beauty, and the second line couplet ends by circling back to the idea of that beauty (sweetness); A two-line unit where the final line’s theme or sound structure reflects an earlier, foundational theme or sound pattern.
Additional Notes
A two-line unit (couplet) where the second line mirrors the first not just in structure or content, but with elements appearing in a reversed order; a form of chiasmus.
Also Known As
Backward couplet retrograde rhyme couplet reverse-ordered pair Boustrophedonic couplet
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