hysteron proteron ("latter before") 1) "Altering the normal order of words and clauses is a basic strategy in the organisation of discourse, which in classical rhetoric is exemplified by a number of related figures of speech grouped under the collective term ‘transposition’. For instance, anastrophe, as in ‘Glistens the dew upon the morning grass’, or ‘She looked at the sky dark and menacing’, or ‘Troubles everybody’s got’ implies an alteration of the normal syntactic order (Matthews 1997, Silva Rhetoricae on-line). Another figure of speech which was commonly used in classical literature is that of hysteron proteron (‘valet atque vivit’, ‘he is well and lives’, or, in conversational English, ‘put your shoes and socks on – not in that order, of course!’) which involves the transposition of the temporal order of related events (Silva Rhetoricae on-line). Such figures of speech rely for their effect on expectations about a normal order in the succession of communicative events, the alteration of which brings about the desired stylistic effects. More than being mere changes in word order, they imply a shift in the expected order of the building blocks of information structure. In this paper I argue that constructions such as dislocated phrases, as in ‘It’s ready, your meal’, appositions, as in ‘Anna, the cook, baked the cake’, parentheses, as in ‘Your dinner, as we agreed, is ready’ constitute alterations of an expected or unmarked order of the elements in the sentence. Such examples of ‘fancy syntax’, to use the label given by Prince (1998), perform a communicative purpose and this purpose is generally accompanied by a specific prosodic form." Source and further information: http://www.ling.cam.ac.uk/COPIL/Vol2/astruc-aguilera.pdf 2) "The hysteron proteron ("latter before") is a rhetorical device in which the first key word of the idea refers to something that happens temporally later than the second key word. The goal is to call attention to the more important idea by placing it first." "An example of hysteron proteron encountered in everyday life is that of a person getting up and putting on their "shoes and socks", rather than socks and shoes." "In addition to being a rhetorical device, the hysteron proteron can be used to describe a situation that is the reverse of the natural or logical order. "Putting the cart before the horse" and "topsy-turvydom" are examples/synonyms of hysteron proteron." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteron_proteron