hardly

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

almost not

• “he hardly ever goes fishing”
• “he was hardly more than sixteen years old”
• “they scarcely ever used the emergency generator”