Direction: Identify the part of speech the underlined word belongs to.

Hardly had he reached home when the rain started.

Question

Question

Answer 1

The correct answer is option 1 i.e. Adverb.

Key Points

The underlined word 'Hardly' is an adverb which means 'scarcely'. For example, Hardly had I entered the room, the power went off.

As we have to identify which part of speech the word belongs to, we need to know the significance of the parts of speech.
Parts of Speech:
- A category to which a word is assigned in accordance with its syntactic functions.
- In English, the main parts of speech are noun, pronoun, adjective, determiner, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection.
- Let's understand the definitions of the parts of speech given in options with examples

Parts of speech	Function	Example
Adverb	modifies a verb, adjective or another adverb	They are extremely poor. I walk very slow.
Interjection	word or phrase that expresses a strong feeling or emotion	Hurrah! we won. Alas! he died.
Pronoun	replaces a noun to avoid repetition	Emma is very kind. She never hurts anyone.
Preposition	shows the relationship of a noun or pronoun to another word	He is sitting on the chair. I was standing before the judge.

Important Points

Here, the word ‘Hardly' modifies the verb 'reached'. So, Hardly will be categorized as an adverb.
Whenever Hardly...when is used we follow this pattern: ‘Hardly had/did(helping verb)+subject+verb+when..’
It is always used for the past tense.