Uneathe

Part of speech: adjective, adverb

Definitions

1. Archaic term meaning with great difficulty, or only just barely and not without effort
2. An old-fashioned adverb describing something done hardly or with considerable struggle
3. Obsolete word for scarcely or with difficulty, used to show that an action was barely managed

Etymology: The word is built from "un-," the negating prefix, and "eath," an Old English adjective meaning "easy." Its literal sense is "not easy," and it came to mean "with difficulty" or "scarcely." Its root is related to Old Norse "auðr" and German "öde," which now means "desolate" or "barren." The shift from that older sense of emptiness to "easy" is likely, though the exact path is uncertain. Edmund Spenser revived the word in the late sixteenth century, using it throughout "The Faerie Queene" as an archaic touch. Poets after him kept it alive as a deliberately old-fashioned term, and it survives today mainly in literary contexts.