Word.ws English Dictionary

hardlier

hardlier is the comparative form of hardly.

Meaning of hardly

Adverb

hardly (comparative hardlier or more hardly, superlative hardliest or most hardly)

  1. (degree) Barely, only just, almost not.
    • They hardly ever watch television.
  2. Certainly not; not at all.
    • I hardly think they'll come in this bad weather!
  3. (archaic) With difficulty.
    • And what gentle flame soever doth warme the heart of young virgins, yet are they hardly drawne to leave and forgoe their mothers, to betake them to their husbands […]., Folio Society, 2006, vol.1, p.234
  4. (dated) Harshly, severely; in a hard manner.
    • I was a fool when I married him; and I am so far an incurable fool on that subject, that, for the sake of what I once believed him to be, I wouldn’t have even this shadow of my idle fancy hardly dealt with.1849 May – 1850 November, Charles Dickens, The Personal History of David Copperfield, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], published 1850, →OCLC
  5. (obsolete) Firmly, vigorously, with strength or exertion.
    • Let him hardly be possest with an honest curiositie to search out the nature and causes of all things […]., Folio Society, 2006, vol.1, p.148

See all 6 meanings of hardly

Questions about hardlier

What is hardlier the comparative form of?
Hardlier is the comparative form of hardly.

Words near hardlier in the dictionary

  1. Hardisons
  2. Hardisty
  3. Hardistys
  4. hardkill
  5. Hardley
  6. hardlier
  7. hardliest
  8. hardline
  9. hardliner
  10. hardliners
  11. hardlines

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hardlier (page history and authors); hardly (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “hardlier.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hardlier. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.