knappast
See also: knäppast
Swedish
Pronunciation
Audio: (file)
Adjective
knappast
- predicative superlative degree of knapp
Adverb
knappast (not comparable)
- hardly, scarcely (certainly not)
- Det är knappast hans fel
- It's hardly his fault (intuitively, "No way it's his fault")
- (now uncommon) barely, scarcely (almost not)
Usage notes
Still common in (sense 2) in the dictionaries from the Swedish Academy when designating a word or sense as rare or as rarely appearing in the plural – perhaps for historical reasons. This is potentially confusing for native speakers, who are likely to interpret "knappast" as "certainly not" in contemporary Swedish.
Interjection
knappast
- no way!, I don't think so!