Osoreru

Osoreru is a native Japanese word meaning 'to fear'. In Chinese characters, it's normally written . It is also used in the polite expression osore-irimasu, which means 'excuse me' or 'pardon me'. (Using an expression of fear for politeness may sound somewhat over the top, but few people stop to consider that English also uses fear to convey an apologetic tone in the expression 'I'm afraid that...').

The following example uses the character expression :

Osore-irimasu ga, mae-kin de o-negai-itashimasu. Please pay in advance.

As with many Japanese verbs, however, it's quite common to use hiragana in preference to Chinese characters.

Osore-irimasu ga Tonari no reji e o-mawari kudasai Please go to the next counter

Bōryoku-dan o osorenai, kane o dasanai, riyō shinai Bōryoku-dan tsuihō sengen no mise Sugamo Keisatsu-sho / Sugamo Bōhan Kyōkai We don't fear gangs, we don't pay money, we don't use gangs. A premises declaring the expulsion of gangs Sugamo Police Station, Sugamo Anti-crime Association

A simple Google search turned up the following distribution for osore (using the verb form osoreru would probably come up with different figures).

Form	No. of occurrences
	349,000
	228,000
	22,400
	1,420

The two bottom forms use different Chinese characters to express different nuances of the word osore, namely 'terror' and 'concern' respectively.