Etymology: < Old French controve-r, with stem-stress contreuve = Italian controvare, < con- together, etc. + trovare, Old French trover, modern French trouver to find < Latin turbāre to disturb, stir up, wake up, etc. (Controver thus answered formally to Latin conturbāre.) The vowel-mutation according to stress, regular in Old French (compare mouvoir, meuve, pouvoir, peut, etc.), has in modern French been levelled under ou ( < o), but some French dialects have treuver, treuve. Middle English had originally both controve and contreve ( < -euve, -oeve); compare move, meve, prove, preve, people; controve and its Scots representing contruve survived to the 16th cent.; but, otherwise than in move, prove, the finally prevailing form was contreve; compare retrieve. From the 15th cent. this became contrive, a phonetic change still unexplained: compare brier, friar, tire. The sense ‘invent with ingenuity’ has passed in French into that of ‘invent fraudulently or falsely’; though this is often present in English, it has never superseded the original good or neutral sense.

Etymology: apparently irregularly < Latin contrīvī, preterite of conterĕre to wear away (compare contrite , contrition ); perhaps associated by translators with the contrive v.¹