Anachronisms!

I agree Greatnan. I think 'harass' came into common usage around 1987

It is common practice in English to put the stress in front of a double letter. So haráss makes sense.

It's also common practice to put stress on the first syllable of English words, though I think Americans do it more than we do.

Harass is from Old French.

Chambers gives both pronunciations as correct, though it puts hárass first.

No case, m'lud.

You'll just have to have edgy teeth, greatnan

The stress will have been on the syllable 'rass' in French, I would have thought, so historically that would seem to be correct.

I say cómparable. Mr Bags says compárable.

I expect there are umpty-ump examples and I'm sure they've all been invented for the sole purpose of edging teeth.

Not sure I'd call such things anachronisms either. #pedantryalert

I often have to rethink a French word which is the same in English because the stress is placed on a different syllable. I maintain that a British programme should use the British pronunciation! I blame American TV programmes - I hope we don't start saying 'hostle' and 'aluminum'.

But how can you say that haráss isn't English? It obviously is English!

Har'ASS - sounds like Frank Spenser - and I think it might have spread from there...

I say 'formidable - I hear for'midable a lot...

'controversy / con'troversy

re'search / 'research

I didn't say it wasn't English, bags, I said I did not think it was pronounced with the stress on 'ass' in the 1960's.
Your reply certainly qualifies for Pedants' Corner!

As far back 1958 it was being pronounced with the access on the last syllable.

It was part of an unannounced dictation test given us at Moray House teacher training college which began "A harassed pedlar and an embarrassed fiddler ...." Only a very few people got the whole thing right. Some had a lot of mistakes and there were some embarrassed future teachers.

Wish I could remember the rest - it would have been perfect for Pedants' corner.

Googled and found it. Apparently a dominie in Dumfriessshire in the 1920s used to use it a spelling test. One mistake and you got the strap. Luckily they did not strap embryo teachers in Edinburgh in 1958.

"A harassed pedlar met an embarrassed cobbler in a cemetery assessing with unparalleled ecstasy the symmetry of his uncle’s ankles.”

elegran At my primary school in Stockport in the fifties, you got the cane if you got less than 7/10 in the weekly Times Tables test

Bags I have finally, after meditating in the bath for half an hour, come up with a word with double letters which doesn't have the accent on that syllable.
Windlass.
Thinking about 'harass', I think there's a slight difference in meaning when he emphasis is placed differently.
If I put the emphasis on the first syllable, I would mean that I was being pressured by events eg 'I feel really harassed today' meaning I had too much to do and think about.
If the emphasis is on the second syllable, I would use it to mean a person was pressurising or bullying me, eg 'I've been harassed by that new manager at work'.
Anyone agree?

Like everything in life, the common pronunciation of words does change over time. (Look at Belinda in The Rape of the Lock who sometimes "counsel takes and sometimes tea", which must have been pronounced tay or the rhyme doesn't work.)

When did kilometre with the stress on the first syllable (as kilogram, kilocalorie, kilojoule, etc. still are) become kil/ometre with the stress on the second syllable? Or mandatory with the stress on the first syllable become man/datory with the stress on the second? Both some time since the 1960s, I think.

In principle, I agree with Greatnan. I can't understand why production companies lavish resources on costume and sets and completely ignore the dialogue. The recent unlamented BBC version of Father Brown was a good example. But there were so many anachronisms and so much sheer ignorance in that series I've ground at least one layer of enamel off my teeth!

jane, an exception (there will be more) that proves the rule . Check out the derviation of windlass and you'll see what I mean. The current spelling is a corruption (there's another one but it's from cor + rupt) of the original.

Think of tomorrow, merry, merrier, merriest, etc. Perhaps it's another of those 'rules' that apply to Old English/Germanic words but not necessarily to words with a Latin/French origin.

Just pondering.

What annoys me more in period dramas is that the women so often don't wear hats/bonnets outdoors when they bloody well would have done at the time being portrayed.

I think my tooth enamel is allright though.

Thinking about teeth – period dramas don't get them right either. When Pasolini made The Decameron, not an especially wonderful film, he did use people with blackened teeth and gaps in their mouths for authenticity.

That would have affected pronunciation too.

And the men never take their hats off, even in church!

Bags derivation of windlass? [puzzled emoticon]
#feelingabitthickthismorning

Look it up in a dictionary, is what I meant. Origin probably windas, according to Chambers, and possibly from old French wanlace.

But they don't really know.

So the 'lass' bit is just a wrong spelling that has stuck.

lily, OMG! I hadn't noticed that! More teeth grinding.

So twentieth/twenty-first century people will need to be shown as having ground down teeth, caused by irritability at pronunciations and the hat-ignorance of TV directors!