Definition of "chiastic" in English

adjective

1. Pertaining to chiasmus.

   • 1981 [Gerstenberg/Research Press], John W. Welch, Chiasmus In Ancient Greek and Latin Literatures, John W. Welch (editor), Chiasmus in Antiquity, 2020, Wipf and Stock, page 261, In the Aeneid, Vergil uses chiasmus in order to make his poetry smoother and more picturesque. Many lines could be quoted in which a chiastic order of words was necessary to maintain the dactylic hexameter.
   • 2009 [Ashgate Publishing], William E. Engel, Chiastic Designs in English Literature from Sidney to Shakespeare, 2016, Taylor & Francis (Routledge), page 22, Looking at David in this way has more to do with mnemotechnics than chiasmus, and yet the process by which earlier themes attach themselves to David and then are rendered differently by the poets does bespeak a movement that bears an affinity with the chiastic pattern of presenting something in a set order only to play it back differently so as to imbue it with different implications.

2. (by extension) Pertaining to the position of two things relative to one another.