From WordNet (r) 2.0 (August 2003) [wn]:
hardly
adv 1: by a small margin; "they could barely hear the speaker"; "we
hardly knew them"; "just missed being hit"; "had
scarcely rung the bell when the door flew open";
"would have scarce arrived before she would have found
some excuse to leave"- W.B.Yeats [syn: barely,
just, scarcely, scarce]
2: almost not; "he hardly ever goes fishing"; "he was hardly
more than sixteen years old"; "they scarcely ever used the
emergency generator" [syn: scarcely]
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Hardly \Hard"ly\ (h[aum]rd"l[y^]), adv. [AS. heardlice. See
Hard.]
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1. In a hard or difficult manner; with difficulty.
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Recovering hardly what he lost before. --Dryden.
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2. Unwillingly; grudgingly.
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The House of Peers gave so hardly their consent.
--Milton.
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3. Scarcely; barely; not quite; not wholly.
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Hardly shall you find any one so bad, but he desires
the credit of being thought good. --South.
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4. Severely; harshly; roughly.
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He has in many things been hardly used. --Swift.
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5. Confidently; hardily. [Obs.] --Holland.
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6. Certainly; surely; indeed. [Obs.] --Chaucer.
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