Scarcely

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Scarce \Scarce\, Scarcely \Scarce"ly\, adv.
     1. With difficulty; hardly; scantly; barely; but just.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              With a scarce well-lighted flame.     --Milton.
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              The eldest scarcely five year was of age. --Chaucer.
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              Slowly she sails, and scarcely stems the tides.
                                                    --Dryden.
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              He had scarcely finished, when the laborer arrived
              who had been sent for my ransom.      --W. Irving.
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     2. Frugally; penuriously. [Obs.] --Chaucer.
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From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  scarcely
       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}, {hardly},
               {just}, {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: {hardly}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  72 Moby Thesaurus words for "scarcely":
     a bit, a little, at infrequent intervals, barely, by a hair,
     by an ace, by no means, ever so little, exiguously, extremely,
     faintly, fairly, feebly, hardly, hardly ever, here and there,
     imperfectly, in a measure, in a way, in no way, in places,
     in some measure, in spots, inappreciably, inconsequentially,
     infrequently, insignificantly, just a bit, kind of, lightly,
     little, meagerly, minimally, minutely, negligibly, not at all,
     not hardly, not often, not quite, noway, nowise, on no account,
     only just, piddlingly, pretty, quite, rarely, rather, scantily,
     scarce, scarcely ever, scrimpily, seldom, skimpily, slightly,
     somewhat, sort of, sparsely, sparsim, spottily, stingily,
     tant soit peu, to a degree, to some extent, triflingly, uncommonly,
     under no circumstances, unfrequently, unoften, very, very seldom,
     weakly