What is the difference between 怖い and 恐い


As a follow-up to [Would 私は怖い mean "I'm scared" or "I'm
scary"?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/11715/would-%E7%A7%81%E3%81%AF%E6%80%96%E3%81%84-mean-
im-scared-or-im-scary)

We know that 怖い can mean both "to be scared" and "to be scary to somebody".

What about the difference between 怖い and 恐い? Or more general 怖 and 恐? How does
恐 come to mean such different things as:

> 恐らく （おそらく） – regrettably  
>  恐竜 （きょうりゅう） – dinosaur




For the general difference between these two kanji it may be better to avoid a
direct comparison between the versions of こわい and look at their other uses. In
particular I associate the kanji 恐 with the word 恐ろしい, which you would usually
not alternately write as 怖ろしい, which is very similar to 怖い but carries more of
an objective sense of "scary" while 怖い tends to be more of a subjective thing.

I think this example sentence taken from
[here](http://oshiete.goo.ne.jp/qa/4279195.html) shows the difference pretty
succinctly:

> 「草原で恐ろしい毒蛇にあい、怖かった」

So you see a snake, which we can all probably agree was pretty frightening (in
appearance, etc.), and the speaker felt afraid on a personal level as well.
That's why we write 恐竜, essentially a scary dragon. [This
answer](http://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q1310528873)
also backs up this idea. If you want to use 恐い I'm sure the nuance can carry
over along with the kanji.

As for the origins of おそらく, if the explanation on [this
site](http://okwave.jp/qa/q902235.html) is to be trusted, then the kanji 恐 in
Chinese includes a meaning of possibility, and it was absorbed into Japanese
hundreds of years ago through scholars and their 漢文.

