恐怕
kǒngpà · HSK 3
perhaps
😨 恐 = fear + 怕 = afraid; 'I'm afraid (that)...' softens to 'perhaps'
Literally 'fear-afraid' — like English 'I'm afraid it'll rain', the speaker hedges a guess with mock worry. So 恐怕 means 'perhaps' or 'I'm afraid that', always with a slightly negative expectation.
怕 — heart radical 忄 + white 白
A semantic-phonetic compound. The heart radical 忄 signals an emotion, while 白 (bái) supplies the sound, which shifted over time to pà. The combination came to mean 'fear'—a feeling in the heart—though 白 contributes only phonetically, not by meaning.