refractoryadj.n.

Etymology: Alteration (with suffix substitution) of refractary adj., after adjectives ending in -ory suffix². With sense A. 5 compare classical Latin refractārius refractary adj. (1739 in post-classical Latin in this sense in the passage translated in quot. 1741), French réfractaire refractary adj. (1762 in this sense). In sense A. 7 after French réfractaire refractary adj. (1876 in this sense: E.-J. Marey in Physiologie expérimentale 2 73). In refractory phase (see sense A. 7) and refractory period n. at Compounds after French phase réfractaire and période réfractaire respectively (both 1876 in E.-J. Marey). Compare later refractive adj. With use as noun compare earlier refractary n.In early use the word was sometimes stressed on the first syllable; such a pronunciation is recorded by the orthoepist Cooper (1687), showing a pattern of stress on the prefix which is common in early modern English words of more than three syllables (see further E. J. Dobson Eng. Pronunc. 1500–1700 (ed. 2, 1968) II.§2). With this stress pattern compare also English regional raffatory , raffertory , refertory (see note at Rafferty's rules n.), and similar variation in refractary adj., refractary n. Johnson (1755) notes that the word ‘is now accented on the first syllable, but by Shakespeare on the second’; the stress mark, however, is placed after the second syllable in Johnson's headword, but on the first syllable of the headword refractoriness (the latter is altered in the fourth edition).