[after F. contre-danse, It. and Sp. contra danza, all corruptions of the English word COUNTRY-DANCE, by the conversion of its first element into the F. contre, It., Sp. contra against, opposite.] COUNTRY-DANCE; esp. a French country-dance.
The English country-dance was introduced into France during the Regency 1715–23, and thence passed into Italy and Spain; cf. Littré, s.v. Contre-danse2, and Venuti, Scoperte di Ercolano (Rome, 1748), 114 ‘I canti, i balli … che a noi sono pervenuti con vocabolo Inglese di contraddanze, Country Dances, quasi invenzione degli Inglesi contadini.’ The arrangement of the partners in a country-dance in two opposite lines of indefinite length easily suggested the perversion of country into contre-, contra- opposite. Littré’s theory, that there was already in 17th c. a French contre-danse with which the English word was confused and ran together, is not tenable; no trace of the name has been found in French before its appearance as an adaptation of the English. But new dances of this type were subsequently brought out in France, and introduced into England with the Frenchified form of the name, which led some Englishmen to the erroneous notion that the French was the original and correct form, and the English a corruption of it. Thus a writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine, 1758, p. 174, said, ‘As our dances in general come from France, so does the country-dance, which is a manifest corruption of the French contre-danse, where a number of persons placing themselves opposite one to another, begin a figure’: Partly under the influence of this erroneous notion as to the etymology, partly as a mere retention of the French form, contra-dance, contre-dance have been used, and contre-danse is still in use, esp. for a French or foreign dance of this type.
1803. Fessenden, Terrible Tractor., 14. So fam’d Aldini, erst in France Led dead folks down a contra dance.
1830. ‘Juan de Vega’ [C. Cochrane], Jrnl. Tour, xix. (1847), 135. After we had danced two or three quadrilles, a contre dance was proposed.
1844. W. H. Maxwell, Scotland (1855), I. 27. I had gone down a contra danse.
1873. Browning, Red Cott. Nt.-cap, 1421. If Mademoiselle permit the contre-danse.
1879. C. Macdonald, Sir Gibbie, II. xiii. 230. All the ricks in the yard were bobbing about, as if amusing themselves with a slow contradance.
2. A piece of music written for such a dance.
1880. Grove, Dict. Mus., I. 396/2. Beethoven has written twelve contredanses for orchestra, from one of which he developed the finale of his ‘Eroica’ symphony.
