Link Centre Dictionary

scarcely

scar·cely

UK/ˈskɛəsli/ US/ˈskɛɹsli/ fairly common

adverb

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
Synonyms
2.

almost not

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

Origin

From Middle English scarcely, scarsly, scarsely, scarsliche, scarseliche, equivalent to scarce + -ly.

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.