I suggest we use the most common definition of fear.
The word fear does have a common meaning, the definitions given, not just one of them, but all of them.
The problems with language are many. Not only is common, spoken, everyday language (used in conversations) quite different from proper written, language, it also changes throughout the centuries. (old English, middle English, modern English). Also time and place can change how a word is perceived. In America a biscuit is a type of bread. In some European countries a biscuit is what Americans would call a cookie. Go back twenty years and
swagger would have meant only it's proper definition,
"to conduct oneself in an arrogant or superciliously pompous manner; especially : to walk with an air of overbearing self-confidence". Now it has adopted a slang meaning of,
"a person's style- they way they walk, talk, dress." (yes it's the urban dictionary because I'm giving a slang definition). Swagger still has some of it's original meaning, but it's starting to mean something different.
Some words even gain an opposite meaning. Take the word
terrific
it used to basically be an adjective describing something terrible or bad. Now the word terrific is almost always used in the complete opposite sense, in a positive manor. (For example "I love that game it's terrific!"
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ter1.htmA quote from the site above:
"
Terrific, as you say, has gone further than either of these by not merely weakening but completely inverting its sense. It started out, around the time of Milton, as the adjective related to terror, "causing terror, terrifying; fitted to terrify; dreadful, terrible, frightful", as the OED comprehensively puts it.
I don't see how it would be so correct to just assume that when the word fear was used as the translation that they just meant one and only one of the many possible definitions."
In short, languages change depending on time, place, and because how languages evolve. Words may carry multiple proper meanings and also may have some slang meanings as well. If a text was written one way at one time, the source should be considered. In order to understand a text in it's full context, especially if the text is historically, you have to look at when it was written, when it was translated, what language was it originally written in, what idea is trying to be conveyed in the text, and how was the text translated.
So, just to say that the word
fear always means; a terrifying feeling produced by the presence of some negative and imposing force would be incorrect and doesn't do the word or language any justice.
