fear, terror, trepidation

In a post "O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms"

I mentioned one way to analyse the English lexicon, in which three etymological levels are sometimes observable.

How about "fear / terror / trepidation" ?

Most of the time, a word with many syllables is "a big word," which means the word tends to be Latin/Greek origin and is not used in a casual conversation.

To Japanese, this distinction is understandable because of its similar lexical feature.

I would translate:

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fear 恐さ
terror 恐怖
trepidation 戦慄
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Just by looking at these Japanese words, a certain different aura of meaning they emit somehow sinks in our mind. Interestingly, the number of strokes in the letters increases as
the words become more literary and difficult. In general, many strokes tend to signal a sense of complexity, a phenomenon equivalent to a big word with many syllables in English.

We have some familiarity with multiple layers of lexicon due to the borrowings and adaptations from the continental culture throughout history.