Learn English – Why does “contrary” have two different pronunciations

historical-changepronunciation

I have the impression all Anglophones pronounce contrary with stress on the second syllable (cont-RARE-ee) when applied to a person's actions or disposition, as in:

Mary Mary quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids all in a row.

…but it's nearly always stressed on the first syllable (CONT-rər-ee) in all other contexts.

It's still the same word, and I can't really see any difference in meaning apart from that which arises naturally by virtue of it being applied to a person, rather than something abstract/inanimate.

Is my impression correct? If so, is there any reason? It can't just be for the sake of that well-known nursery rhyme, can it?

I know I probably shouldn't ask, but are there any other cases where "the same word" has a different stress pattern according to context? (I'm not counting things like You don't haff to do that, where the consonant can change according to whether the word is stressed or not.)

Best Answer

Apparently the original stress was on the second syllable, but poets bent its stress to whatever suited them. For example, both Chaucer and Shakespeare were known to use both versions (conˈtrary and ˈcontrary), although Shakespeare seems to have more often used the one with initial stress.

You can get all that from the OED’s elaborative note regarding the stress of contrary:

The later OFr. form contraire gave the variant contrair, long retained in the north. The original stress, after Fr. and L., wasconˈtra.rie, but the poets, from Chaucer to Spenser and Shakspere, use both conˈtra.ry and ˈco.ntrary (the latter the more frequent in Shaks.); of conˈtrā.ry, many instances occur in 17th c. verse; it is the only pronunciation recognized by Bailey (died 1742), and it is still app. universal in dialect and uneducated speech, esp. in sense (def#3) (def#b), which is now confined to these forms of speech and to the nursery. ˈCo.ntrary was used by Milton and Pope, and is given by Johnson (though he retained conˈtra.rily, conˈtra.riness, conˈtra.riwise) and in all later dictionaries.

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