Etymology: apparently < early Old French (retained in Anglo-Norman) conˈtrarie, < Latin contrārius opposite, hostile, etc., < contrā against: compare adversary and see -ary suffix¹. The later Old French form contraire gave the variant contrair adj., n., adv., and prep., long retained in the north. The original stress, after French and Latin, was conˈtrarie , but the poets, from Chaucer to Spenser and Shakespeare, use both conˈtrary and ˈcontrary (the latter the more frequent in Shakespeare); of conˈtrāry , many instances occur in 17th cent. verse; it is the only pronunciation recognized by Bailey (died 1742), and it is still apparently universal in dialect and uneducated speech, esp. in sense A. 3b, which is now confined to these forms of speech and to the nursery. ˈContrary was used by Milton and Pope, and is given by Johnson (though he retained conˈtrarily, conˈtrariness, conˈtrariwise) and in all later dictionaries. Walker, 1791, says ‘The accent is invariably placed on the first syllable by all correct speakers, and as constantly removed to the second by the illiterate and vulgar’: where the words ‘placed on’ and ‘removed to’ should change places, but the usage described is that of the present day. Sometimes, however, dialectally, the noun is made ˈcontrary, while the adjective remains conˈtrary.

Etymology: < French contrari-er (11th cent. in Littré), < late Latin contrāriāre , < contrārius contrary adj. compare contrariate v.