Practical employing of "barely had a chance / had time".

[Kolridg]

If I look at this sentence I quite understand what it is about:

I barely have time to eat my dinner, much less rewrite my sermon.

Obviously someone have very limited time to get few things done. Perhaps, it carries just information about a compressed time.

But when look at the next sentence I can't discern whether he or she had no time to turn around and actually didn't turn around before it bit him or her, or just had no enough time but got a chance to turn around and did turn around. That is to say, is it something idiomatic use of conjunction of "barely" + "had a chance" / "had time" that always has one and the same meaning without having evident need of the context to shape that meaning?

I barely had a chance to turn around before it bit me.

In my directory, Russian interpretation of the sentence is done so that he did turn around...

One more similar example:
I barely had time to stuff Lois' salmon in my jacket.

And translation says, that he still have stuffed the salmon into jacket.

To sum up, will the context define the sense, or it is just kind of idiom? Thank you.

 

[Kolridg]

I understood.

Well, but what if someone ask me why hadn't I turned around to prevent myself from being bit by dog, and I need to reply that it had no any sense to do so, because hardly the time I had was enough to undertake any move at all, including the turning around, how then I can express that thought in English? Only by saying: I had no enough time to do that. ? Is it so that I can't use words like barely/hardly/scarecly in similar sentences at all?.

For example:

The time was hardly enough to react.

Or again like in case with "get a chance/have time" this sentence means that I still did react, though time was limited?

 

[GoesStation]

Say I didn't have enough time.​

 

[jutfrank]

There was not enough time to react.
There was hardly enough time to react.

Remember that hardly and barely mean 'almost not'. They do not mean not.

 

[Raymott]

"There was barely enough time to react, let alone avoid getting bitten."

You did react (in some way or another), but this reaction was not enough to avoid getting bitten..