Definition of "hardly"

How lonely they looked as they lay there, and how ill assorted! That little heap had been for two thousand years the wisest, loveliest, proudest creature - I can hardly call her woman - in the whole universe.

1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887

With this the second of three games in seven days for Stoke, it was hardly surprising to see nine changes from the side that started against Newcastle in the Premier League on Monday.

2011 November 3, David Ornstein, “Macc Tel-Aviv 1-2 Stoke”, in BBC Sport

Investors face a quandary. Cash offers a return of virtually zero in many developed countries; government-bond yields may have risen in recent weeks but they are still unattractive. Equities have suffered two big bear markets since 2000 and are wobbling again. It is hardly surprising that pension funds, insurers and endowments are searching for new sources of return.

2013 July 6, “The rise of smart beta”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8843, page 68

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 […].

1603, Michel de Montaigne, translated by John Florio, The Essayes […], London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […]

While in Chelsea, Anne Smiley pined, taking very hardly to her unaccustomed role of wife abandoned.

1977, John Le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy, Folio Society, published 2010, page 40

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

"Mr. Cholmondeley, the young men out here are much too hardly worked to allow them time for paying impertinent compliments."

1866 February, [O.G. Trevelyan], “The Dawk Bungalow”, in Frazer's Magazine, London, page 219

Let him hardly be possest with an honest curiositie to search out the nature and causes of all things […].

1603, Michel de Montaigne, translated by John Florio, The Essayes […], London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […]

Sometimes my pulse beat so quickly and hardly, that I felt the palpitation of every artery; at others, I nearly sank to the ground through languor and extreme weakness.

1818, [Mary Shelley], chapter IV, in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. […], volume I, London: […] [Macdonald and Son] for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, pages 101–102