@Suiseiseki @mimorinka

> Hardly usually means "hard"

I don't recall encountering it used that way. looking around I could quickly find only a few examples and all appeared hopelessly archaic to me. I saw harshly listed as an explicitly archaic definition in one online dictionary

actually I just recalled the phrase "working hard or hardly working?"

> "hardly raining" isn't grammatically wrong, but it feels wrong

it doesn't feel wrong to me. in fact I've used that exact phrase before. I think it would be more common for me to use "barely" tho, same as you

from https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hardly it looks like it's one of those words whose meaning inverted over a period of hundreds of years