scarcely

adv

1. (modal)Probably not.

   “One could scarcely find any trout in the stream without the stocking program.”

   “The staff here are frequently in the news, thanks to their successful efforts to make an attractive station where travellers would scarcely expect to find one.”

2. (modal)Certainly not, hardly at all.

   “One could scarcely expect the man to know how to fly a helicopter.”

   “He did not enter upon the subject without being aware that government by its very nature counteracts the improvement of individual intellect; but, as the views he entertains in this particular are out of the common road, it is scarcely to be wondered at that he understood the proposition more completely as he proceeded, and saw more distinctly into the nature of the remedy.”

   “But, of course, this weather had put a stop to every kind of movement; for even if men could have borne the cold, they could scarcely be brought to face the perils of the snow-drifts.”

   “The planet Mars, I scarcely need remind the reader, revolves about the sun at a mean distance of 140,000,000 miles, and the light and heat it receives from the sun is barely half of that received by this world.”

   “His clothes could scarcely be called shabby, at least they passed muster in the half-light, but one’s imagination could not have pictured the wearer embarking on the purchase of a half-crown box of chocolates or laying out ninepence on a carnation buttonhole.”

3. Hardly: only just; by a small margin.

   “Scarcely had she arrived when she was put to work.”

   “He had scarcely finished, when the labourer arrived who had been sent for my ransom.”

   “It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye to a telescope.”

   “In 1776 manufactories scarcely existed even in name in all this vast territory.”

   “Scarcely had she got fairly into it, however, before the beasts closed in behind her, […]”