"scarcely" meaning in English

See scarcely in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Adverb

IPA: /ˈskɛəsli/ [UK], /ˈskɛrsli/ [US] Audio: en-us-scarcely.ogg [US]
Etymology: scarce + -ly Etymology templates: {{ety-suffix|scarce|ly}} scarce + -ly
  1. If you can scarcely hear what a person is saying, the person is speaking so softly that you can barely hear what they are talking about.
    Sense id: simple-scarcely-en-adv-~Imh5EQ6
  2. If you scarcely expect someone to be able to do something, there is only a slim chance of them being able to do the task.
    Sense id: simple-scarcely-en-adv-F-LVuhBQ
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Categories (other): Terms suffixed with -ly
{
  "categories": [
    {
      "kind": "other",
      "name": "Terms suffixed with -ly",
      "parents": [],
      "source": "w"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "scarce",
        "2": "ly"
      },
      "expansion": "scarce + -ly",
      "name": "ety-suffix"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "scarce + -ly",
  "hyphenation": "scarce‧ly",
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "adv",
  "senses": [
    {
      "glosses": [
        "If you can scarcely hear what a person is saying, the person is speaking so softly that you can barely hear what they are talking about."
      ],
      "id": "simple-scarcely-en-adv-~Imh5EQ6"
    },
    {
      "glosses": [
        "If you scarcely expect someone to be able to do something, there is only a slim chance of them being able to do the task."
      ],
      "id": "simple-scarcely-en-adv-F-LVuhBQ"
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈskɛəsli/",
      "tags": [
        "UK"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈskɛrsli/",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    },
    {
      "audio": "en-us-scarcely.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "scarcely"
}

{
  "categories": [
    "Terms suffixed with -ly"
  ],
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "scarce",
        "2": "ly"
      },
      "expansion": "scarce + -ly",
      "name": "ety-suffix"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "scarce + -ly",
  "hyphenation": "scarce‧ly",
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "adv",
  "senses": [
    {
      "glosses": [
        "If you can scarcely hear what a person is saying, the person is speaking so softly that you can barely hear what they are talking about."
      ]
    },
    {
      "glosses": [
        "If you scarcely expect someone to be able to do something, there is only a slim chance of them being able to do the task."
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈskɛəsli/",
      "tags": [
        "UK"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈskɛrsli/",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    },
    {
      "audio": "en-us-scarcely.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "scarcely"
}

Download raw JSONL data for scarcely meaning in English (0.7kB)

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-02-12 from the simplewiktionary dump dated 2025-02-02 using wiktextract (1c4b89b and 9dbd323). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.