HARDLY A

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does hardly a mean? 

• HARDLY A (adjective)
  The adjective HARDLY A has 1 sense:

1. very few

  Familiarity information: HARDLY A used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HARDLY A (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Very few

Context example:

hardly a man is now alive who remembers that famous date and year

Similar:

few (a quantifier that can be used with count nouns and is often preceded by 'a'; a small but indefinite number)

 Context examples 

I had gone up to town about an investment, and I met him in Regent Street with hardly a coat to his back or a boot to his foot.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Every body was punctual, every body in their best looks: not a tear, and hardly a long face to be seen.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Is this a joke, Mr. Holmes? It is hardly a subject for pleasantry.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Looking round, there was hardly a moving object upon the whole vast expanse of green and purple down.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

And yet how strange that they should ever let a doctor approach her unless he were a confederate, which is hardly a credible proposition.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

No wonder that we looked gloomily at each other that night, and sought our blankets with hardly a word exchanged.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Why, there is hardly a foot of soil in all this region that has not been enriched by the blood of men, patriots or invaders.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Hardly a night passed without my dreaming of it.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

We passed over five or six rivers, many degrees broader and deeper than the Nile or the Ganges: and there was hardly a rivulet so small as the Thames at London-bridge.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

They had left Louisa beginning to sit up; but her head, though clear, was exceedingly weak, and her nerves susceptible to the highest extreme of tenderness; and though she might be pronounced to be altogether doing very well, it was still impossible to say when she might be able to bear the removal home; and her father and mother, who must return in time to receive their younger children for the Christmas holidays, had hardly a hope of being allowed to bring her with them.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)