verb #13,976

Meanings

  1. 1 to fear
  2. 2 to be afraid of

Examples

Wúsuǒwèijù de zhànshì chōng shàng le qiánxiàn.
The fearless soldiers charged to the front line.
Tā xīnzhōng chōngmǎn le kǒngjù.
His heart was filled with fear.

Tips

usage
is literary and rarely used alone in modern speech. It appears in compounds: 恐惧 (kǒngjù, terror), 畏惧 (wèijù, dread), 无所畏惧 (wúsuǒwèijù, fearless).

Components

radical
xīn
heart (radical form of 心)
Left-side heart radical — the indexing radical, side-form of . Files in the family of emotion verbs: fear, hate, 怀 cherish, worry, regret. Marks fear as an inner state of the heart, exactly how classical Chinese psychology categorized strong feelings.
phonetic
tool; possess
Right supplies the sound — jù exactly, no shift. Originally depicted hands offering a cooking vessel — to furnish or possess. Pure phonetic role in ; the 'tool' meaning contributes little semantically. Same phonetic family: all, hurricane. The simplified replaces the bulkier traditional (with the watchful-eye phonetic on the right).

Stroke Order