English proficiency shares some striking feature in terms of expression. It differs from person to person, word to word and sometimes in terms of perspective. This is the subjective nature of the English language that creates a wide range of vocabulary to associate with a specific situation in myriads of ways. For assisting you with the perfect understanding of the English language, EngConvo has incorporated some of the best online spoken English courses. There are some connotations which have fine lines of differences and this article is framed exactly for presently you with such distinction between two words which creates a kind of unpleasant emotion among people. The words are ‘fear’ and ‘panic’.
The word ‘fear’ generally are used by people when there is a definite sense of unpleasant emotions triggered within oneself with respect to some circumstances or things that are on the way or maybe we’re on the way. Whereas, the panic generally associates with a kind of uncertain terror. A feeling which creates a disruption in your system but you are not clear about the respective circumstances or the modes which inculcate such circumstances.
You often tend to use either of the two to explain or vent out your feelings or thoughts in a particular case. And, mostly end up confusing the two. I will show you some examples.
Sentence 1: He feels intense fear when he is in water.
Sentence 2: He feels panicked when he is in water.
Critically analyse both of the sentences. What can you see? In the first one, the person is very much aware of the circumstances and the consequences while in case of the second one, he has such feeling of ‘panic’ because he is not aware of the consequences. There is also one more thing that gulfs into the meaning of the two words. Fear is getting close to the thought of terror and panic, with a kind of anxiety, grief.
You will also find this instance in other sentences like :
- The crowd was in a state of panic.
- The crowd was in great fear.
This particular sentence laid out in two different ways shows how the meaning changes with the two separate use of vocabulary. I know it is difficult to dissect the sentences in terms of developing a better approach towards English proficiency, but sometimes it is difficult to look so closely.
Another set of examples can be :
- I am trying to overcome my fear of dogs.
- I am trying to overcome my panic in dogs.
Here, the second sentence is not used. Why? The answer is simple. It is because we are known to the fact of what dogs are, how they look like and the fact that dogs bite. Therefore we generally use the first sentence. From time to time, in your daily life, you will witness people use the various speech of vocabulary to empathize a particular statement in several ways and it mostly depends on what perspective they have about the respective statement. You have to analyse it from the differentiation of these words. That is exactly something taught in the online spoken English training of EngConv
