What's the difference between afraid and fearful?

Afraid


Definition:

  • (p. a.) Impressed with fear or apprehension; in fear; apprehensive.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Don't be afraid of being pigeonholed - it's great to have a niche.
  • (2) I personally felt grateful that British TV set itself apart from its international rivals in this way, not afraid to challenge, to stretch the mind and imagination.
  • (3) Clarke varies the intensity of sessions but for most of the time it's go hard or go home: I've learned that neither more pain nor being sick are anything to be afraid of.
  • (4) "Don't be afraid to talk and ask questions, even with your teachers around.
  • (5) The Federal Penal Service rejected a request from Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova to serve their remaining time in Moscow; given the high profile nature of their case, they are afraid for their safety in the communal environment of a correctional colony.
  • (6) What I saw Aid workers speak out about mental health: 'I was afraid they would think I couldn't handle it' Read more The first place I visited was Nyamirambo, a neighbourhood in the south-west part of Kigali.
  • (7) The uniformed man who faced them was young and afraid.
  • (8) I want to raise awareness about the number of people who now feel afraid on our streets and map areas where people at risk can feel safest,” said the site’s founder, Hanna Thomas.
  • (9) Co-operatives should not be afraid to champion radical causes, or engage with controversial issues, but this must not involve affronting customers, or turning our backs on good people of different political persuasions.
  • (10) Through small and large acts of deprivation and destruction we follow the process: the removal of hope, of dignity, of luxury, of necessity, of self; the reduction of a man to a hoarder of grey slabs of bread and the scrapings of a soup bowl (wonderfully told all this, with a novelist's gift for detail and sometimes very nearly comic surprise), to the confinement of a narrow bed – in which there is "not even any room to be afraid" – with a stranger who doesn't speak your language, to the cruel illogicality of hating a fellow victim of oppression more than you hate the oppressor himself – one torment following another, and even the bleak comfort of thinking you might have touched rock bottom denied you as, when the most immediate cause of a particular stress comes to an end, "you are grievously amazed to see that another one lies behind; and in reality a whole series of others".
  • (11) If you, too, are feeling down about the fight ahead, don’t be afraid to ask your elders for guidance.
  • (12) Women with later menarche attached less importance to sex, were more afraid of labour pains and thought less of labour preparation courses.
  • (13) So, if the Fed is afraid that the fiscal cliff may cause a disruption so big that even the Fed's all-encompassing embrace of the markets can't fix it, then it's Chairman Bernanke's word – and not that of Congress – that carries the most weight.
  • (14) Subjects who stated that they were not afraid of methadone, frequently injected drugs, and rarely used crack were more likely to express intentions to enroll and remain in community methadone treatment.
  • (15) The drug pipeline is going to be slow, I’m afraid,” the CDC director, Tom Frieden, told NBC’s Meet the Press.
  • (16) I was afraid of getting lost, but did not lose myself even once.
  • (17) On our own, we're quietly afraid that nobody remembers us for the right reasons.
  • (18) I suppose he was afraid he might be there for the rest of his life.
  • (19) I went inside, and the sound of the rain on the roof and the darkness inside made me very afraid.
  • (20) "If we are afraid of the religious impact, we need to work from now to help in the revolution, to be able, after, to rebuild."

Fearful


Definition:

  • (a.) Indicating, or caused by, fear.
  • (a.) Inspiring fear or awe; exciting apprehension or terror; terrible; frightful; dreadful.
  • (a.) Full of fear, apprehension, or alarm; afraid; frightened.
  • (a.) inclined to fear; easily frightened; without courage; timid.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Mike Ashley told Lee Charnley that maybe he could talk with me last week but I said: ‘Listen, we cannot say too much so I think it’s better if we wait.’ The message Mike Ashley is sending is quite positive, but it was better to talk after we play Tottenham.” Benítez will ask Ashley for written assurances over his transfer budget, control of transfers and other spheres of club autonomy, but can also reassure the owner that the prospect of managing in the second tier holds few fears for him.
  • (2) Since the start of this week, markets have been more cautious, with bond yields in Spain reaching their highest levels in four months on Tuesday amid concern about the scale of the austerity measures being imposed by the government and fears that the country might need a bailout.
  • (3) S&P – the only one of the three major agencies not to have stripped the UK of its coveted AAA status – said it had been surprised at the pick-up in activity during 2013 – a year that began with fears of a triple-dip recession.
  • (4) On Friday, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry appeared to confirm those fears, telling reporters that the joint declaration, a deal negotiated by London and Beijing guaranteeing Hong Kong’s way of life for 50 years, “was a historical document that no longer had any practical significance”.
  • (5) I fear that I will have to go through another witch-hunt in order to apply for this benefit."
  • (6) And adding to this toxic mix, was the fear that the hung parliament would lead to a weak government.
  • (7) Ex-patients of a dental fear clinic were found to have significantly reduced, yet still high, dental anxiety scores in comparison with the pre-intervention scores.
  • (8) The hypothesis that the standard acoustic startle habituation paradigm contains the elements of Pavlovian fear conditioning was tested.
  • (9) Wharton feared that if his bill had not cleared the Commons on this occasion, it would have failed as there are only three sitting Fridays in the Commons next year when the legislation could be heard again should peers in the House of Lords successfully pass amendments.
  • (10) In a recent study, Orr and Lanzetta (1984) showed that the excitatory properties of fear facial expressions previously described (Lanzetta & Orr, 1981; Orr & Lanzetta, 1980) do not depend on associative mechanisms; even in the absence of reinforcement, fear faces intensify the emotional reaction to a previously conditioned stimulus and disrupt extinction of an acquired fear response.
  • (11) But that promise was beginning to startle the markets, which admire Monti’s appetite for austerity and fear the free spending and anti-European views of some Italian politicians.
  • (12) First, Dr Collins is fear-mongering when he says that ‘lives will be lost’ as a result of our calculations.
  • (13) Whether out of fear, indifference or a sense of impotence, the general population has learned to turn away, like commuters speeding by on the freeways to the suburbs, unseeingly passing over the squalor.
  • (14) Under pressure from many backbenchers, he has tightened planning controls on windfarms and pledged to "roll back" green subsidies on bills, leading to fears of dwindling support for the renewables industry.
  • (15) The countries have accused each other of cross-border attacks and there are fears the current tension could spark a wider war with Nkunda at its centre.
  • (16) They have not remotely done this so far, largely from fear of domestic political consequences that cannot be simply dismissed.
  • (17) Likud warned: “Peres will divide Jerusalem.” Arab states feared that his dream of a borderless Middle East spelled Israeli economic colonialism by stealth.
  • (18) One of the reasons for doing this study is to give a voice to women trapped in this epidemic,” said Dr Catherine Aiken, academic clinical lecturer in the department of obstetrics and gynaecology of the University of Cambridge, “and to bring to light that with all the virology, the vaccination and containment strategy and all the great things that people are doing, there is no voice for those women on the ground.” In a supplement to the study, the researchers have published some of the emails to Women on Web which reveal their fears.
  • (19) Some have been threatened and assaulted, while others’ homes have been ransacked, their families living in constant fear.
  • (20) The population prevalence of high dental fear was 115 fearful children per 1000 population (SE = 0.02).