Scarcely (6)
(Other definitions for barely that I've seen before include "Not quite" , "By a small margin" , "Just about, nothing to spare" , "how babies are born?" , "just a short while before" .)
'scarcely' is the definition.
(I know that scarcely can be written as hardly)
This is all the clue.
(Other definitions for hardly that I've seen before include "With great difficulty" , "Almost not" , "Barely, scarcely" , "Not much" , "Not quite "It seems unlikely!"" .)