Barely in Different Languages
Discover 'Barely' in 134 Languages: Dive into Translations, Hear Pronunciations, and Uncover Cultural Insights.
Barely
Afrikaans skaars | ||
Albanian mezi | ||
Amharic በጭንቅ | ||
Arabic بالكاد | ||
Armenian հազիվ թե | ||
Assamese কোনোমতে | ||
Aymara k'achaki | ||
Azerbaijani ancaq | ||
Bambara sisan | ||
Basque ozta-ozta | ||
Belarusian ледзьве | ||
Bengali সবে | ||
Bhojpuri खाली | ||
Bosnian jedva | ||
Bulgarian едва | ||
Catalan amb prou feines | ||
Cebuano hapit | ||
Chinese (Simplified) 仅仅 | ||
Chinese (Traditional) 僅僅 | ||
Corsican à pena | ||
Croatian jedva | ||
Czech sotva | ||
Danish knap | ||
Dhivehi ކިރިޔާ | ||
Dogri मसां-मसां | ||
Dutch nauwelijks | ||
English barely | ||
Esperanto apenaŭ | ||
Estonian vaevu | ||
Ewe kpᴐtᴐ vie ko | ||
Filipino (Tagalog) bahagya | ||
Finnish tuskin | ||
French à peine | ||
Frisian amper | ||
Galician apenas | ||
Georgian ძლივს | ||
German kaum | ||
Greek μετά βίας | ||
Guarani haimetéva | ||
Gujarati માંડ | ||
Haitian Creole apèn | ||
Hausa da kyar | ||
Hawaiian paepae | ||
Hebrew בקושי | ||
Hindi मुश्किल से | ||
Hmong nyuam qhuav muaj | ||
Hungarian alig | ||
Icelandic varla | ||
Igbo sonso | ||
Ilocano apaman | ||
Indonesian nyaris | ||
Irish ar éigean | ||
Italian appena | ||
Japanese かろうじて | ||
Javanese lagi wae | ||
Kannada ಕೇವಲ | ||
Kazakh әрең | ||
Khmer ទទេ | ||
Kinyarwanda gake | ||
Konkani निखटें | ||
Korean 간신히 | ||
Krio nɔ izi | ||
Kurdish wekî tûne | ||
Kurdish (Sorani) جۆ | ||
Kyrgyz эптеп | ||
Lao ເປົ່າ | ||
Latin vix | ||
Latvian knapi | ||
Lingala moke | ||
Lithuanian vos vos | ||
Luganda okusigalawo katono | ||
Luxembourgish kaum | ||
Macedonian едвај | ||
Maithili मुश्किल सँ | ||
Malagasy zara raha | ||
Malay nyaris | ||
Malayalam കഷ്ടിച്ച് | ||
Maltese bilkemm | ||
Maori papaki | ||
Marathi केवळ | ||
Meiteilon (Manipuri) ꯈꯖꯤꯛꯇꯪ ꯉꯥꯏꯕ | ||
Mizo hram hram | ||
Mongolian арай гэж | ||
Myanmar (Burmese) အနိုင်နိုင် | ||
Nepali मुश्किलले | ||
Norwegian så vidt | ||
Nyanja (Chichewa) pang'ono | ||
Odia (Oriya) କ୍ୱଚିତ୍ | | ||
Oromo xoqqooma | ||
Pashto یوازې | ||
Persian به سختی | ||
Polish ledwo | ||
Portuguese (Portugal, Brazil) mal | ||
Punjabi ਸਿਰਫ | ||
Quechua yaqa | ||
Romanian de abia | ||
Russian едва | ||
Samoan tau lē | ||
Sanskrit केवलं | ||
Scots Gaelic gann | ||
Sepedi e sego gantši | ||
Serbian једва | ||
Sesotho ka thata | ||
Shona zvishoma | ||
Sindhi نَڪَ | ||
Sinhala (Sinhalese) යන්තම් | ||
Slovak sotva | ||
Slovenian komaj | ||
Somali dirqi ah | ||
Spanish apenas | ||
Sundanese bieu | ||
Swahili vigumu | ||
Swedish nätt och jämnt | ||
Tagalog (Filipino) bahagya | ||
Tajik базӯр | ||
Tamil அரிதாகவே | ||
Tatar аракы | ||
Telugu కేవలం | ||
Thai แทบจะไม่ | ||
Tigrinya ንንእሽተይ | ||
Tsonga talangi | ||
Turkish zar zor | ||
Turkmen zordan | ||
Twi (Akan) pɛ | ||
Ukrainian ледве | ||
Urdu بمشکل | ||
Uyghur ئاران | ||
Uzbek zo'rg'a | ||
Vietnamese vừa đủ | ||
Welsh prin | ||
Xhosa kancinci | ||
Yiddish קוים | ||
Yoruba awọ | ||
Zulu ngokulambisa |
Etymology & Notes
| Language | Etymology / Notes |
|---|---|
| Afrikaans | The word "skaars" in Afrikaans originally meant "to shear" or "to cut", but it has since come to mean "barely" or "scarcely". |
| Albanian | The Albanian word "mezi" has an Indo-European root, related to the English "medium" and "mediocre". |
| Amharic | The word በጭንቅ "barely" derives from the verb ጭነቅ "to be stuck" and refers to a minimal or insufficient amount or quality. |
| Arabic | "بالكاد" is a loanword from Turkish "belki" (maybe), which itself is from Persian "بالك" (perhaps), ultimately deriving from the Proto-Indo-European root *peh₂-, meaning "to protect" or "to watch out for". |
| Azerbaijani | The word "ancaq" in Azerbaijani is also used to mean "only" or "but". |
| Basque | "Ozta-ozta" is derived from the Basque word "ozta", meaning "almost" or "barely", and is used to emphasize the closeness of a margin or the narrowness of an escape. |
| Belarusian | "Ледзьве" (barely) comes from "ледзве" (hardly, scarcely), which in Old Church Slavonic means "with difficulty" |
| Bengali | "সবে" could also mean "just now" or "recently". |
| Bosnian | The word "jedva" is derived from Proto-Slavic *jedva, which also means "hardly" or "with difficulty." |
| Bulgarian | Bulgarian "едва" originates from Old Church Slavonic "едва" (hardly) and is related to "едвали" (hardly), which in turn is connected to the root "ед-" (one) and the suffix "-вали" (doubtful). Thus, "едва" initially meant "with difficulty" or "almost not". |
| Catalan | The expression "amb prou feinēs" ("쎱amb pro쒩 fe쒓n쎱s"; literally: "with enough finesses") originated with the 19th-century Catalan writer Mari쒡 쎠ngels Fort, who used it with reference to a person or animal barely alive. |
| Cebuano | "Hapit" can also mean "almost" or "very nearly" in Cebuano. |
| Chinese (Simplified) | In Chinese, “仅仅” is not only used to mean “barely”, but also to mean “just”, “only”, or “no more than”. |
| Chinese (Traditional) | The Chinese character "僅" can also mean "respectful" or "careful". |
| Corsican | In Corsican, "à pena" is related to the Italian "appena" and also means "just now" and "at the moment". |
| Croatian | "Jedva" derives from the Proto-Slavic word "jьdva", which originally meant "with difficulty" or "hardly". Its use as an adverb meaning "barely" or "scarcely" developed later in the Slavic languages. |
| Czech | Sotva derives from Old Czech "sotv", meaning "scarcely". Possibly from Proto-Germanic *sawat "scarcely", possibly related to Latin "satis" "enough". |
| Danish | The word “knap” can mean “barely” or “hardly,” but it can also mean “tight” or “closely fitting.” |
| Dutch | In archaic Dutch, nauwelijks meant 'closely, in detail'. |
| Esperanto | The Esperanto word "apenaŭ" derives from the Polish word "ledwie". |
| Estonian | In addition to its usual meaning, "vaevu" can also refer to "scarcely" or "hardly". |
| Finnish | Tuska, a cognate of Tuskin, also means "agony" or "anguish". |
| French | À peine ('barely') derives from Medieval Latin 'ad penam', meaning 'with difficulty' or 'under pain of'. |
| Frisian | It goes back to the Latin phrase ''ad unum per centum'', meaning ''one of a hundred''. |
| Galician | Galician “apenas” derives from Latin “vix”, meaning “barely” or “hardly”, and also “with difficulty”. |
| Georgian | The word "ძლივს" ("barely") in Georgian derives from the archaic word "ძლივ" ("power, strength"), implying a sense of "with great effort" or "with difficulty". |
| German | The word 'kaum' is derived from Middle High German 'kûme' or 'kûm' and can also mean 'hardly', 'scarcely' or 'only just'. |
| Greek | The word "μετά βίας" is derived from the phrase "μετά πάσης βίας", which means "with all force". |
| Gujarati | The Gujarati word "માંડ" also means "barely enough" or "narrowly". |
| Haitian Creole | The word "apèn" in Haitian Creole derives from the French "à peine", meaning "hardly" or "with difficulty". |
| Hausa | "Da kyar" in Hausa shares the same root with "kara" which means "to climb" or "to overcome", indicating the sense of a struggle in achieving something. |
| Hawaiian | The Hawaiian word "paepae" can also mean "a platform or bench made of stone or wood". |
| Hebrew | The word "בקושי" also has the connotation of "with difficulty or effort" in Hebrew. |
| Hindi | "मुश्किल से" is a compound of the Arabic word "mushkil" (difficult) and the Persian suffix "-se" (from). |
| Hmong | The phrase nyuam qhuav muaj is also a term for a young child who just begins to crawl. |
| Hungarian | The word "alig" is derived from the Turkic word "alg", meaning "lacking, insufficient" or from the Hungarian word "alá", meaning "under". |
| Icelandic | 'Varla' is cognate with Old Norse 'varla' (warily, hardly), Faroese 'varliga' (slowly) and Norwegian 'varlig' (cautious). |
| Igbo | "Sonso" can be used to refer to something that is empty, hollow, or unripe. |
| Indonesian | Nyaris's root word, 'nyari', also means 'to seek' or 'to search'. |
| Irish | The word "ar éigean" in Irish can also mean "by the narrow margin", "hardly" or "scarcely". |
| Italian | The word "appena" comes from the Latin "ad poenam" (meaning "to punish") and can also mean "almost" or "nearly." |
| Japanese | "かろうじて" can also mean "by force" or "by a narrow escape". |
| Javanese | The word 'lagi wae' in Javanese also means 'every time', 'often', or 'frequently' in English. |
| Kannada | ಕೇವಲ ('barely') originated from the Sanskrit word 'केवल' (kevala), meaning 'alone' or 'only' |
| Kazakh | In Kazakh, "әрең" can also mean "only" or "hardly". |
| Khmer | In some dialects, "ទទេ" can have a negative or sarcastic connotation as "just enough to get by". |
| Korean | “간신히” literally translates to “by the skin of the teeth” in the original Chinese phrase, “悬命于一发”. |
| Kurdish | "Wekî tûne" literally means "like a hair" in Kurdish and refers to a small amount or a narrow escape. |
| Kyrgyz | The word “эптеп” (“barely”) is derived from the Old Turkic word “*äptǟ” (“only, barely”), which is also the etymon of the Turkish word “еptе” (“barely”). |
| Lao | The Lao word "ເປົ່າ" derives from the Thai word "เป่า" (pàao), meaning "blow, inflate, or pump". |
| Latin | The Latin word vix could also mean "scarcely". |
| Latvian | It is probably a cognate of Swedish "knapp" which derives from Low German "knapp" meaning "narrow" or "short". Alternatively, it may derive from German "knapp" in the same sense via Polish "knap". |
| Lithuanian | The Lithuanian word "vos vos" can be traced back to the 16th century, and its original meaning was "very" or "much" rather than the present-day "barely". |
| Luxembourgish | "Kaum" is also the plural form of "Kand" (child). |
| Macedonian | The word "едвај" is cognate to the Bulgarian "едва" and derives from Proto-Slavic *jedva, which itself likely descends from Proto-Indo-European *h₁ed- "one". In Old Church Slavonic the word was rendered as едива and meant "with difficulty," with the modern sense emerging later in Macedonian and Bulgarian, though still retaining that initial sense in Serbo-Croatian (едва "only just now") and Russian (едва ли "it is unlikely"). |
| Malagasy | The root word "zara raha" suggests the meaning "not yet there", thus signifying an incomplete state. |
| Malay | "Nyaris" comes from the root word "nyari" meaning close to or nearly, suggesting that something is almost but not quite achieved. |
| Maltese | "Bilkemm" is derived from the Arabic phrase "bil-ki-am", meaning "just enough to" or "with barely the amount of." |
| Maori | In some contexts, papaki can also mean 'nearly' or 'almost'. |
| Marathi | केवळ means 'only' in Marathi, in addition to 'barely' |
| Mongolian | The Mongolian word "арай гэж" can also mean "almost" or "nearly". |
| Nepali | मुश्किलले is derived from the Hindi word मुश्किल ( |
| Norwegian | The expression "så vidt" can also mean "to the point" or "as far as". |
| Nyanja (Chichewa) | The word 'pang'ono', meaning 'barely' in Nyanja, is also used to refer to 'a small amount' or 'a little bit'. |
| Pashto | The word 'یوازې' can also mean 'only' or 'merely' in Pashto. |
| Persian | The Persian word "به سختی" ("barely") also means "with difficulty" in modern Farsi, likely a later usage. |
| Polish | The verb "leźć" (climb), related to "ledwo," was used before the noun and was equivalent to "with difficulty; barely". |
| Portuguese (Portugal, Brazil) | "Mal" can also mean poorly or badly, as in "estou mal" (I feel poorly) |
| Punjabi | The word "ਸਿਰਫ" can also mean "only" or "just" in Punjabi. |
| Romanian | The Romanian word "de abia" derives from the verb "abea", meaning "scarcely" or "hardly". |
| Russian | "Едва" in Russian also means "hardly" or "with difficulty". |
| Samoan | The Samoan word "tau lē" originally meant "barely moving" but now also means "barely" in general. |
| Scots Gaelic | The word `gann` has Gaelic cognates meaning `narrow` in space or in time. |
| Serbian | In Slavic languages, the root "jedv-" means "one, single, only", hence the meaning of "scarcely" in Serbian. |
| Sesotho | "Ka thata" is derived from the verb "ho thata" (to be difficult), and also means "with difficulty." |
| Shona | The word “zvishoma” may also refer to a state of “almost being able to do or achieve something” and it may be used figuratively to mean “nearly” as in "zvinenge zvashoma" - it was nearly like this. |
| Sindhi | The word "نَڪَ" ("barely") in Sindhi is related to the Sanskrit word "नक" ("negative"), implying something that is insufficient or lacking. |
| Sinhala (Sinhalese) | The word 'යන්තම්' is also used to imply an excessive amount, meaning 'exceedingly'. |
| Slovak | The word "sotva" in Slovak comes from the Old Slavic word "sьto" meaning "only just". |
| Slovenian | The root word 'komaj' means 'hard' and is related to the words 'komajati' (to toil) and 'komajda' (barely). |
| Somali | The word "dirqi ah" in Somali can alternately mean "to come up short" or "to fail to meet expectations." |
| Spanish | The word "apenas" in Spanish evolved from the Latin "ad pedem", meaning "to the foot". |
| Sundanese | The Sundanese word "bieu" also means "very" or "a lot". |
| Swahili | "Vigumu" is possibly derived from the Proto-Bantu root "-gumu" meaning "lacking" or "insufficient," and is related to the Swahili word "ngumu" meaning "difficult." |
| Swedish | "Nätt och jämnt" literally means "nice and even". |
| Tagalog (Filipino) | The Tagalog word "bahagya" also denotes something partial, incomplete, and slightly perceptible. |
| Tajik | "Базӯр" originally meant "narrow path" in Farsi, and it still has this meaning in the Tajik expression "базӯр роҳ". |
| Tamil | The Tamil word 'அரிதாகவே' has the alternate meaning 'rarely' in English. |
| Telugu | "కేవలం" (kēvalam) and "కేవలము" (kēvalamu) are both words in Telugu meaning "barely," "scarcely" or "merely." The words are both derived from Sanskrit, where "kevala" has the same meanings. |
| Thai | The Thai word "แทบจะไม่" (barely) comes from the Sanskrit word "तत्पर" (intent on, enthusiastic), and the Thai word "แทบ" (almost, nearly), meaning "almost intent on, nearly enthusiastic". |
| Turkish | "Zar zor" comes from the Persian phrase "zor ba zor" meaning "with great difficulty or effort". |
| Ukrainian | "Ледве" also means "almost not" in Ukrainian, and it stems from the word "ледь" meaning "ice". |
| Urdu | The word "بمشکل" in Urdu is derived from the Persian word "بمشکل", meaning "with difficulty" or "hardly". |
| Uzbek | "Zo'rg'a" also means "almost" (but not quite) or "nearly". In some contexts, it may also mean "rarely". |
| Vietnamese | "Vừa đủ" literally means "enough" and can also mean "nearly" or "about to." |
| Welsh | The Welsh word "prin" also means "beginning" or "start". |
| Xhosa | The Xhosa word "kancinci" stems from the noun "nci" (edge) and can also mean "by the edge of, on the verge of" or to "scrape or shave". |
| Yiddish | "קוים" comes from the Polish "ledwie" |
| Yoruba | Awọ in Yoruba can also mean 'small', 'little' or 'unripe'. |
| Zulu | The word "ngokulambisa" (barely) can also mean "lightly" or "a little bit" in Zulu. |
| English | A less common meaning of 'barely' from the archaic noun 'bairn' can mean 'poor' or 'not well', particularly in the phrase 'bairnly'. |