Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adverb By a very little; hardly.
  • adverb In a scanty manner; sparsely.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Nakedly; openly; without disguise or concealment.
  • Scantily; poorly: as, a man barely clad, or a room barely furnished.
  • Only just; no more than; with nothing over or to spare: as, she is barely sixteen.
  • Merely; only.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adverb Without covering; nakedly.
  • adverb Without concealment or disguise.
  • adverb Merely; only.
  • adverb But just; without any excess; with nothing to spare (of quantity, time, etc.); hence, scarcely; hardly.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adverb degree By a small margin.
  • adverb degree Almost not at all.
  • adverb archaic merely.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adverb in a sparse or scanty way
  • adverb only a very short time before

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

bare +‎ -ly

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