When do we use "rarely, hardly, seldom"?

Question

I'd like to know when should we use "rarely" and "hardly" and "seldom". Can we use these adverbs in the same situation? Or do we need to follow some criteria for using those different adverbs?

Answer 1

I would say that rarely and seldom are interchangeable. "I rarely eat meat," and, "I seldom eat meat," mean pretty much the same thing, and they both indicate how few times it happens. Hardly refers more to something being unimportant. "It is hardly raining out," means it's raining very little. If you want to use hardly in the place of the other two, the correct formation would be "hardly ever," as in, "I hardly ever eat meat."

Answer 2

Thank you for your question. The words you list are synonyms for one another, so feel free to use them interchangeably. Thanks to the richness of the English language, we often have multiple words that are identical in meaning. Therefore, if you are writing a paper and need to repeat this thought, you can do so by using a variety of words. This avoids monotony and improves your overall writing style.

There are, however, other words that have synonyms with different shading of meanings (another example of our language’s breadth). In those cases it is best to choose the word that has the clearest connotation to the idea being expressed. A good example of this is the noun anger. It has a number of synonyms, some of which are rage, resentment, irritation, or annoyance. In this case you would choose the noun closest to the level of anger being described.

I hope this helps.