Uneath

Part of speech: adverb

Definitions

1. Archaic adverb meaning only just or with great difficulty ; archaic adjective describing something hard to do or accomplish
2. Scarcely, or only with considerable effort, as an old-fashioned adverb ; difficult to carry out, as an obsolete adjective
3. Barely or hardly possible in an archaic sense ; obsolete adjective for something arduous or troublesome to achieve

Etymology: "Uneath" is an archaic adverb meaning "with great difficulty," and its history is almost entirely a matter of two Old English parts. The first is "un-," the familiar negating prefix, and the second is "eath," which meant "easy." Put together, the word simply meant "not easy," and that negative sense carried over into Middle English as "difficult" before the adverbial use of "with difficulty" took hold. The word is a good example of how a negative prefix can quietly turn a common adjective into a rare one. "Eath" itself survived for centuries in poetry and dialect, but it was largely displaced by "easy," which came into English from Old French. "Uneath" was the same kind of formation as "unready" or "unhappy," yet it has been among the less frequently used of these negatives and is now found almost exclusively in older literature.

Synonyms: hardly, scarcely

Antonyms: easily