hard ‧ ly S2 W2 /ˈhɑːdli $ ˈhɑːrdli/ BrE AmE adverb
[ Word Family: noun : ↑ hardship , ↑ hardness , ↑ hardiness ; adjective : ↑ hard , ↑ hardened , ↑ hardy ; adverb : ↑ hard , ↑ hardly ; verb : ↑ harden ]
1 . almost not:
My parents divorced when I was six, and I hardly knew my father.
The children were so excited they could hardly speak.
I can hardly believe it.
Hardly anyone (=almost no one) writes to me these days.
Dad ate hardly anything (=almost nothing) .
There was hardly any (=very little) traffic.
She lives in Spain, so we hardly ever (=almost never) see her.
hardly a day/week/month etc goes by without/when (=used to say that something happens almost every day, week etc)
Hardly a month goes by without another factory closing down.
2 . used to mean ‘not’, when you are suggesting that the person you are speaking to will agree with you:
It’s hardly surprising that she won’t answer his calls after the way he’s treated her.
You can hardly blame Tom for not waiting.
My boss could hardly be described as handsome.
hardly the time/place/person etc (=a very unsuitable time, place, person etc)
This is hardly the place to discuss the matter.
3 . used to say that something has only just happened:
The building work has hardly begun.
hardly ... when/before
She had hardly sat down when the phone rang.
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GRAMMAR
hardly, scarcely
Scarcely is more formal and literary than hardly .
These adverbs come before the verb, unless the verb is a simple tense of ‘be’, or after the first auxiliary:
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He was so ill he could hardly speak (NOT he hardly could speak).
► Do not use hardly or scarcely with a negative word:
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I can hardly believe (NOT can’t hardly believe) he said that.
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There’s hardly any milk left (NOT There’s hardly no milk left).
When talking about one event being followed closely by another, we usually use hardly or scarcely after ‘had’:
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I had hardly got in the house when the phone rang.
In literary writing, it is possible to put hardly or scarcely first, followed by ‘had’ and the subject:
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Hardly had I got in the house when the phone rang.
► Do not use hardly as the adverb of hard . The adverb of hard is hard :
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Students have to study very hard (NOT very hardly).
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I tried hard to remember.