Adjacent Words

Barely definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

BA'RELY, adv. Nakedly; poorly; indigently; without decoration; merely; only; without any thing more; as a price barely in title.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adv
1: only a very short time before; "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, scarcely, scarce]
2: in a sparse or scanty way; "a barely furnished room" [syn: scantily, barely]

Merriam Webster's

adverb Date: before 12th century 1. in a meager manner ; plainly <a barely furnished room> 2. scarcely, hardly <barely enough money for lunch>

Oxford Reference Dictionary

adv. 1 only just; scarcely (barely escaped). 2 scantily (barely furnished). 3 archaic openly, explicitly.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Barely Bare"ly, adv. 1. Without covering; nakedly. 2. Without concealment or disguise. 3. Merely; only. R. For now his son is duke. W. Barely in title, not in revenue. --Shak. 4. But just; without any excess; with nothing to spare ( of quantity, time, etc.); hence, scarcely; hardly; as, there was barely enough for all; he barely escaped.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

Frequency: The word is one of the 3000 most common words in English. 1. You use barely to say that something is only just true or only just the case. Anastasia could barely remember the ride to the hospital... It was 90 degrees and the air conditioning barely cooled the room... His voice was barely audible... = scarcely ADV: ADV before v, ADV group, oft ADV amount 2. If you say that one thing had barely happened when something else happened, you mean that the first event was followed immediately by the second. The Boeing 767 had barely taxied to a halt before its doors were flung open... ADV: ADV before v

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

ad. 1. Poorly, meagrely, slenderly, meanly. 2. Merely, simply, only, just.

Moby Thesaurus

a bit, a little, alone, baldly, by a hair, by an ace, closely, ever so little, exclusively, exiguously, faintly, feebly, hardly, imperfectly, inappreciably, inconsequentially, insignificantly, just, just a bit, lightly, little, meagerly, merely, minimally, minutely, nakedly, narrowly, nearly, negligibly, not hardly, not quite, only, only just, plainly, purely, scantily, scarce, scarcely, simply, simply and solely, singly, slightly, solely, tant soit peu, triflingly, weakly