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HARDLY A
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Very few
Example:
hardly a man is now alive who remembers that famous date and year
Classified under:
Similar:
few (a quantifier that can be used with count nouns and is often preceded by 'a'; a small but indefinite number)
Context examples:
Lodging as I did in Bond Street, there was hardly a day in which I did not catch a glimpse of one or other of you; and nothing but the most constant watchfulness on my side, a most invariably prevailing desire to keep out of your sight, could have separated us so long.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
We worked feverishly at carrying our plunder on deck and depositing it amidships, so feverishly that Maud, whose strength was hardly a positive quantity, had to give over, exhausted, and sit on the steps at the break of the poop.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
With hardly a word spoken, but with a kindly eye, he waved me to an armchair, threw across his case of cigars, and indicated a spirit case and a gasogene in the corner.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I answered, it was very true; and I wondered how I could forbear, when I saw his dishes of the size of a silver three-pence, a leg of pork hardly a mouthful, a cup not so big as a nut-shell; and so I went on, describing the rest of his household-stuff and provisions, after the same manner.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
So perfect was the organisation of the society, and so systematic its methods, that there is hardly a case upon record where any man succeeded in braving it with impunity, or in which any of its outrages were traced home to the perpetrators.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
