"A hard man nowadays is good to find!"

If you've visited chiasmus.com before, you're probably familiar with "implied chiasmus," which occurs when the words of a popular saying are deliberately reversed. Some popular examples are "A hangover is the wrath of grapes," Mae West's "A hard man is good to find," and Kermit the Frog's "Time's fun when you're having flies."

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Oscar Wilde and Implied Chiasmus

In my Never Let a Fool Kiss You or a Kiss Fool You book, I introduced a concept called implied chiasmus, which occurs when the words of a popular saying are deliberately reversed. Some popular examples are Mae West's "A hard man is good to find," Kermit the Frog's "Time's fun when you're having flies," and Ziggy's "A waist is a terrible thing to mind."

If you examine these sayings, you'll notice that each one reverses the words of a popular saying: "A good man is hard to find," "Time flies when you're having fun," and the slogan of the United Negro College Fund, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste."