Adverb

(en-adv)

*1603 , (John Florio), translating Michel de Montaigne, Essays , III.1:

*:And whosoever hath traced mee and nearely looked into my humours, Ile loose a good wager if hee confesse not that there is no rule in their schoole, could, a midde such crooked pathes and divers windings, square and report this naturall motion, and maintaine an apparance of liberty and licence so equall and inflexible […].

With close relation; intimately.

* (John Locke) (1632-1705)

Let that which he learns next be nearly conjoined with what he knows already.

* 1837 , The Dublin University Magazine

She could have joined most comfortably in all their supposings, and suspicions, and doubts, and prognostications, but the honour of the family was too nearly concerned to allow free reins to her tongue.

* 1847 , (Herman Melville), (Omoo)

[H]e was also accounted a man of wealth, and was nearly related to a high chief.

Closely, in close proximity.

*c. 1606 , (William Shakespeare), Macbeth , First Folio 1623, IV.2:

*:I doubt some danger do's approach you neerely .

In close approximation; almost, virtually.

*{{quote-book, year=1922, author=(Ben Travers), title=(A Cuckoo in the Nest)

, chapter=1 citation , passage=She was like a Beardsley Salome , he had said. And indeed she had the narrow eyes and the high cheekbone of that creature, and as nearly the sinuosity as is compatible with human symmetry.}}

*{{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=May-June, author=Kevin Heng

, title=Why Does Nature Form Exoplanets Easily? , volume=101, issue=3, page=184, magazine=(American Scientist) citation , passage=In the past two years, NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope has located nearly 3,000 exoplanet candidates ranging from sub-Earth-sized minions to gas giants that dwarf our own Jupiter.}}

Adverb

(en adverb)

(modal) Probably not.

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

(modal) Certainly not.

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

* 1842 , (William Godwin), ,

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.

* 1869 , , ,

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.

* 1898 , , ,

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.

* 1914 , (Saki), ,

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.

(degree) Almost not at all; by a small margin.

* Washington Irving

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

* 1875 December 7, , ,

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

* 1887 , (Arthur Conan Doyle), (A Study in Scarlet) :

Scarcely had she got fairly into it, however, before the beasts closed in behind her, and she found herself completely embedded in the moving stream of fierce-eyed long-homed bullocks.

* {{quote-book, year=1905, author=

, title= , chapter=2 citation , passage=“Scarcely had Alice reached her twentieth birthday, than she gave her erstwhile fiancée [sic] his formal congé. […]”}}

* 1922 , (Margery Williams), (The Velveteen Rabbit)

That night, and for many nights after, the Velveteen Rabbit slept in the Boy’s bed. At first he found it rather uncomfortable, for the Boy hugged him very tight, and sometimes he rolled over on him, and sometimes he pushed him so far under the pillow that the Rabbit could scarcely breathe.

* 1963 , (Pierre Boulle), :

But we shall take scarcely more than two years to reach it, while we should have needed almost as much time to arrive in the region of Proxima Centauris.

* 1993 , , Joseph Jacobs (translator), The Art of Worldly Wisdom ,

Nature scarcely ever gives us the very best—for that we must have recourse to art.