OT: hardly Re: [Gambas-user] window focus

[Rob]

On Sunday 25 April 2004 10:38, Benoit Minisini wrote:
> > >- I may not understand what you hardly try to explain.
> > Please have a look into you Dico for 'hardly try'.
> Mmm ? What is the problem with "hardly try" ? Doesn't it mean
> "trying with difficulties" ?

Nope, "hardly" in English very rarely means "with difficulties", 
if at all; it's idiomatic.  It means something like "to the 
minimum possible degree" or "almost surely not".  Its 
connotation is somewhat negative.

You could express how easy something was by saying "I hardly even 
had to try", for example, whereas "I hardly tried to get it 
done" means that you didn't try very much at all.

The adverbial form of "hard" is "hard" itself, in one of those 
wonderful English inconsistencies.

Rob