Barely means only just, by the thinnest margin. The suitcase barely fits in the overhead locker; there was barely enough milk for one cup of tea.
It leans negative. Barely means almost not — she barely spoke all evening means she said close to nothing, not that she said a fair amount. Because the negative is already inside it, you do not add another: not he cannot barely walk. Hardly and scarcely do the same job and swap in freely. In writing you meet the flipped word order, barely had we sat down when the phone rang, where barely opens the sentence and the verb jumps in front of the subject. With time it means only a moment ago: he had barely arrived.
1adverbbarelyOnly just; by the smallest possible margin.~54%
“There was barely enough room for the car.”
synonyms: only just
2adverbhardlyAlmost not at all.~44%
“He was so tired he could barely keep his eyes open.”
3adverbmomentOnly a moment before.~2%
“We had barely sat down when the food arrived.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 9 sentences found in the wild and placed 9 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: hardly, scarcely
Barely is bare with -ly on the end, and it has been in English since Old English bærlīċe. The bareness is the whole idea: something barely done is done with nothing to spare. Danish and Norwegian bare, meaning only or just, is the same word in other clothes.
Old English
bærlīċe
Middle English
baarly
English, today
barely
From Middle English baarly, bareliche, barely, barly, from Old English bærlīċe, equivalent to bare + -ly. Compare Danish bare (“only, just”), Norwegian bare (“only, just”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA