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hardly

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hardly adverb with other negative forms (i.e. with not or never). [DARE labels this usage “chiefly South, South Midland”]

1862 West CW Letters (June 25) We get Nothing to Eat here Hardley. 1953 Hall Coll (Hartford TN) The snow never hardly got off the ground. 1974 GSMNP-50:1:10 I’m hoarse. I can’t hardly sing, but that’s the best I could do. 1976 Brandes and Brewer Dialect Clash 287-88 The Asheville, N.C. Citizen-Times on April 11, 1954, said: “Double negatives do not bother the mountain folk. They seem to regard added negatives as simply giving greater force to a statement and sometimes they employ triple, quadruple, even quintuple negatives.” The example of the quintuple negative the Citizen-Times cited was: “Hit’s so downright foggy today nobody can’t hardly see nothing a-tall nohow.” 1998 Dante OHP-12 I was doing so much preaching, and I’d come in of the evening and I didn’t hardly have time to wash the black off of me until I’d have to hit the road.

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