Merism (, ) is a rhetorical device (or figure of speech) in which a combination of two contrasting parts of the whole refer to the whole. For example, in order to say that someone "searched everywhere", one could use the merism "searched high and low". Another example is the sword-and-sandal movie genre, a loose term for a genre of movies made principally in Italy in the 1950s and 1960s set in Classical antiquity. Merisms are common in the Old Testament. For example, in Genesis 1:1, when God creates את השמים ואת הארץ (Modern pronunciation: et hashamaim ve-et haarets) "the heavens and the earth" (New Revised Standard Version), the two parts (heavens and earth) do not refer only to the heavens and the earth. Rather, they refer to the heavens, the earth and everything between them, i.e. God created the entire world, the whole universe. Other famous examples of Biblical merisms are Genesis 1:5, where "evening" and "morning" refer to "one day" (including noon, afternoon etc.); and Psalm 139, where the psalmist declares that God knows "my downsitting and my uprising", i.e. God knows all the psalmist’s actions. Etymology The term entered English in 1894 in the biological sense, but had appeared earlier in rhetorical contexts where it denoted "'synecdoche in which totality is expressed by contrasting parts' (such as high and low, young and old)". It derives from Modern Latin merismus, from Greek μερισμός merismos 'a dividing or partitioning', ultimately from merizein 'to divide', from meros 'part, share'. Biological usage In biology, a merism is a repetition of similar parts in the structure of an organism (Bateson 1894). Such features are called meristic characters, and the study of such characters is called meristics. An example is in flowers, considering the number of parts in each whorl of organs from which they are constructed. Legal usage Merisms frequently figure in the writing of lawyers, and are a hallmark of legal style. The two parts of the legal merism "Last Will and Testament" at one time referred to two documents, enforced in two separate courts: the will disposed of a decedent's real property while the testament disposed of chattels. It became customary to combine the instruments in a single dispositive document, and the name has continued long after the doctrines that required its use became obsolete in common law. A lawyer who writes a will typically includes a residuary clause that disposes