An unpleasant, often powerful feeling stirred by the expectation or recognition of danger.
An unpleasant, often powerful feeling stirred by the expectation or recognition of danger — the broad base term of the family.
The most general term: it carries a charge of anxiety and usually some failing of courage, and can fasten on a present, concrete threat as readily as an expected one. Register-neutral and the default word; it may be fleeting or prolonged, slight or grave, and takes a direct object (“fear of heights”). Less abrupt than fright, less reason-destroying than panic, less engulfing than terror, and without the revulsion of horror. The anticipatory words (worry, anxiety, apprehension, dread) lean lower and more future-directed.
Old English fær “calamity, sudden danger, peril,” from Proto-Germanic *feraz “danger” (cf. German Gefahr). The early sense was the external peril itself; the emotion “state of being afraid” developed by the late 12c. A deeper PIE link to *per- “to try, risk” is proposed but flagged uncertain by Merriam-Webster.
Shifted from concrete “sudden danger / peril” (Old English fær) to the internal emotion by the late 12c. The religious sense “dread and reverence for God” is from c. 1400 and survives. No genre or political specialization like terror or horror.