The object of this research is the adverb “contrarily” adjacent to the noun. The goal of this article is to indicate the peculiarities of functionality of the adverb in this position. It is established that the adverb “contrarily” is characterized by adjunction to nouns of substantive semantics and proper names, as well as nouns of abstract semantics. The use of this adverb as a characteristic of an object or phenomenon requires explanation, which is usually given in the preceding or subsequent context. The adverb “contrarily” or a substantive-adverbial combination as a whole is often enclosed in quotation marks. This underlines the irregular method selected by the speaker for describing an object or phenomenon using an adjacent adverb. This article is the first to analyze the peculiarities of functionality of the adverb “contrarily” in adnominal position. The article employs the Russian National Corpus for collecting the material; the analysis of language material is based on the method of continuous sampling. The adnominal use of the adverb “contrarily” in associated with the absence of a special lexeme for denoting the described object of speech. The acquired results contribute to the theoretical description of adverbs as part of speech, and can be used in teaching morphology, syntax and semantics in the course of modern Russian language, as well as in teaching Russian as a foreign language.