obawia

Obawia is a Polish verb form linked to the verb obawiać się, meaning to be afraid or to fear. It is the present-tense form used when the verb is used transitively, without the reflexive particle się. Specifically, obawia corresponds to the third-person singular of obawiać, as in he or she fears something. When the verb is used with the reflexive form obawiać się (to be afraid of), the third-person singular is obawia się.

In practice, obawia is most commonly found in sentences such as On obawia porażki (He fears failure) or Ona obawia się przyszłości (She is afraid of the future) when used without the reflexive pronoun. The shorter, non-reflexive form is less frequent in everyday speech than the reflexive construction obawia się, which is the standard for expressing fear of a specific thing or situation.

Related terms include obawa (fear, worry, concern) and bojaźń (anxiety, fear). The nuance between obawiać się and bać się can be subtle: obawiać się often conveys a cautious or apprehensive fear about something that might occur, while bać się is a more general or colloquial term for fear.

Grammatically, obawia follows typical Polish conjugation patterns for its verb class. It is declined by person and number in the present tense, and its exact form changes with subject pronouns (ja obawiam, ty obawiasz, on obawia, etc.). The verb’s meaning centers on anticipation of negative outcomes rather than immediate danger.

As a linguistic note, obawia illustrates how Polish uses both direct-object fear (to fear something) and reflexive structures (to be afraid of something) to convey different shades of apprehension.