Hardly means barely, scarcely, or almost not at all. When you say you can hardly wait for your birthday, you mean you can barely contain your excitement. If you hardly slept last night, you got very little sleep, maybe just an hour or two.

The word often appears in situations where something is just barely true or possible. A whisper might be so quiet you can hardly hear it. After running a mile, you might be breathing so hard you can hardly talk. If you hardly know someone, you've only met them once or twice.

Notice that hardly emphasizes how little or how close to nothing something is. If your dad says he hardly touched the last cookie before it crumbled, he means he used the gentlest touch possible. If your friend says they hardly studied, they mean they studied very little, not that they studied in a hard or difficult way.

People sometimes pair hardly with other words for emphasis: hardly ever means almost never, and hardly any means very few. If it hardly ever snows where you live, you might see snow once every few years or less.