scarcely

Scarcely means only just, or almost not. Scarcely believe it, scarcely enough, scarcely had he arrived.

It is more formal than hardly and means the same thing. Its neat trick is inversion: scarcely had he sat down when the phone rang, where the subject and verb swap places after it — the same pattern as hardly, no sooner and rarely. Note that scarcely is followed by when or before, not by than, which belongs to no sooner; and that scarcely already carries a negative, so scarcely never is wrong.