What's the difference between barely and merely?

Barely


Definition:

  • (adv.) Without covering; nakedly.
  • (adv.) Without concealment or disguise.
  • (adv.) Merely; only.
  • (adv.) But just; without any excess; with nothing to spare ( of quantity, time, etc.); hence, scarcely; hardly; as, there was barely enough for all; he barely escaped.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Environment groups Environment groups that have strongly backed low-carbon power have barely wavered in their opposition to nuclear in the last decade, although their arguments now are now much about the cost than the danger it might pose.
  • (2) Moderately differentiated tumor revealed a wider range of nucleus size, less clustering (coefficient--3.59) and more hyperchromatic (70.1%) and "bare" (49.4%) nuclei and large nucleoli (22.2%).
  • (3) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats have suffered a dramatic slump in support as a result of their role in the coalition and are now barely ahead of the Greens with an average rating of about 8% in the polls.
  • (4) At the bottom is a tiny harbour where cafe Itxas Etxea – bare brick walls and wraparound glass windows – is serving txakoli, the local white wine.
  • (5) Some antibodies and other proteins bind tightly to nitrocellulose and dissociation of these proteins by Tween 20 is barely detectable.
  • (6) In a barely-noticed submission to the government's Environmental Audit Committee, the London borough of Hounslow, the airport's near neighbours, said the airport was: breaching the World Health Organisation's guidelines for the levels for noise in people's bedrooms; breaching the EU guidelines for levels of nitrogen dioxide; and breaching British standards on the noise experienced by children in classrooms.
  • (7) For a writer barely out of his teens when it was published, in 1946, the book was an unusual achievement.
  • (8) Saving for a deposit is near impossible while paying extortionate rents for barely habitable flatshares.
  • (9) The relatively small reservoir and the maintenance of a minimum flow of water on the trunk river means the plant will work on average at barely 40% of its 11,200MW capacity.
  • (10) I have in the past predicted anger, as the consequences of the recession for public spending become clear; I think the process of expressing that anger has barely begun.
  • (11) She walks past stack after stack of books kept behind metal cages, the shelves barely visible in the dim light from the frosted-glass windows.
  • (12) Dual-positive CD4+CD8+ T cells (which were barely detectable in normal adults), CD4-CD8+ T cells and B cells transiently reached supranormal levels during recovery.
  • (13) But Sir Hayden Phillips's proposals are stalemated by Labour determination to cap spending and the Tory desire to cap Labour's unions funding while leaving their own flow of funds barely affected.
  • (14) In Golgi-Cox-impregnated coronal sections of albino rat brains at 1, 4, 26, 24, 30, 60 and 90 days it is presented the evolution of the spine-less, bare initial zone ("nude zone", NZ) at the proximal apical main dendrites of the layer V pyramidal neurons in the somatosensory and anterior limbie cortex.
  • (15) Average earnings are forecast to grow just 2.4% in 2017, meaning they will be barely rising in real terms.
  • (16) The police officers guarding the entrance to Japan's nuclear evacuation zone barely glance at Yukio Yamamoto's permit before waving him through.
  • (17) An additional 30 cm of clay covered the tailings on one plot and each plot was subdivided into bare soil and vegetated subplots.
  • (18) In order to avoid the drawbacks of the cutting end of the bare optic fibers, it may be covered with sapphire optics which conducts well laser energy.
  • (19) In addition the bare central backbone showed transverse striations.
  • (20) In a third experiment, rats were unilaterally gonadectomized and blood samples were obtained at various intervals for 48 h. Following unilateral gonadectomy there was a significant transient increase in FSH levels in male or female MSG-treated rats as compared to their 0 h values; however, the absolute levels attained were barely equal to the basal concentrations observed in the saline-treated control rats.

Merely


Definition:

  • (adv.) Purely; unmixedly; absolutely.
  • (adv.) Not otherwise than; simply; barely; only.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Interphase death thus involves a discrete, abrupt transition from the normal state and is not merely the consequence of progressive and degenerative changes.
  • (2) By way of major complications, merely one perforation occurred.
  • (3) Indeed, the nationalist and religious right bloc merely held steady , gaining just one seat.
  • (4) A brief review of the last decade or so of developments in health politics, policy and law suggests that health is no longer a field of mere "dynamics without change."
  • (5) The view that testes found lateral to the external ring and which could be pushed some way into the scrotum were merely retractile was questioned.
  • (6) In these three patients, laxity of the knee in flexion was so severe that posterior instability could not be corrected merely by patellar relocation.
  • (7) It has so far returned a mere $6m (£3.6m) of its relatively meagre $28m (£17.1m) budget, according to Forbes, a percentage of just 21%.
  • (8) In the literature this disease is presented merely as a metastasis.
  • (9) The plasmid-encoded activity does not merely replace the RecBCD enzyme failure but differs in several significant ways.
  • (10) Furthermore, changes between merely perceived identical parts can result in apparent depth.
  • (11) Thus, the long stalks of Sk1 or phosphate-starved caulobacters are not merely a function of their longer doubling times.
  • (12) Exogenous macromolecular DNA was able to repair, to an important degree the radiotoxic effect of 3H-thymidine on V79 cells by a mechanism other than the mere reduction of specific activity of 3H-thymidine.
  • (13) Multiple contacts between the gamma-subunit and calmodulin (delta-subunit), as indicated by our data, may help to explain why strongly denaturing conditions are required to dissociate these two subunits, whereas complexes of calmodulin with most other target enzymes can be readily dissociated by merely lowering Ca2+ to submicromolar concentrations.
  • (14) Scott insisted he was an abstract painter in the way he felt Chardin was too: the pans and fruit were uninteresting in themselves; they were merely "the means of making a picture", which was a study in space, form and colour.
  • (15) The charity Bite the Ballot , which persuaded hundreds of thousands to register before the last general election, is to set up “democracy cafes” in Starbucks branches, laying on experts to explain how to register and vote, and what the referendum is all about (Bite the Ballot does not take sides but merely encourages participation).
  • (16) These outcomes further supported the conclusion that the contextual stimuli exerted true conditional control over conditional relations in the equivalence classes and were not merely elements of compound stimuli.
  • (17) A mere glance at the time courses shows what reaction schemes are inapplicable.
  • (18) Since the discovery of the antidepressant effects of interventions in the sleep-wake cycle, a number of hypotheses have emerged according to which disturbances in sleep physiology are not merely expressions but essential components of the pathophysiology of depression.
  • (19) In a Facebook post , the songwriter and activist claims that Swift has merely chosen sides in the battle between Google and Spotify, saying that the singer was trying to “sell this corporate power play to us as some sort of altruistic gesture in solidarity with struggling music makers”.
  • (20) It is assumed that one function of grooming behaviour may be a merely cleansing one.