"barely" in the adverb sense
1. barely, hardly, just, scarcely, scarce
only a very short time before
"we hardly knew them"
"had scarcely rung the bell when the door flew open"
"would have scarce arrived before she would have found some excuse to leave"- W.B.Yeats
2. hardly, scarcely, barely, scarce
almost not
"he hardly ever goes fishing"
"he was scarce sixteen years old"
"they scarcely ever used the emergency generator"
"I can hardly hear what she is saying"
"she barely seemed to notice him"
"we were so far back in the theater, we could barely read the subtitles"
3. barely, just
by a little
"I only just caught the bus"
"he finished the marathon in just under 3 hours"
"it was barely 5 a.m."
"the network has barely 5 percent of viewers"
"the batter just missed being hit"
Source: WordNet® (An amazing lexical database of English)
Princeton University "About WordNet®."
WordNet®. Princeton University. 2010.
View WordNet® License