Worry is usually tied to a specific thing on your mind; anxiety is a more general, persistent unease that can outlast any one cause. Money is his biggest worry right now, but she felt a wave of anxiety before walking into the interview, with no single thought she could point to.
The core difference
Worry is anxious thinking about a specific matter, while anxiety is a more persistent unease that can exist without a clear cause and can also be a medical condition.
- anxiety — a persistent feeling of unease about something uncertain that has not happened yet: Money troubles were the main source of his anxiety.
- worry — to feel anxious or uneasy about something, or the feeling itself: She worried about the exam for weeks beforehand.
How to tell them apart
Worry works well as a verb tied to a specific concern: you worry about an exam, a flight, a phone call that has not come. Anxiety leans noun, and often describes a more diffuse, ongoing unease that is not always pinned to one event. It also has a stricter medical sense: a doctor can diagnose someone with anxiety, a chronic condition that interferes with daily life, in a way "worry" alone does not cover.
Worry has an unusual history. It comes from an Old English word meaning "to strangle," and the sense softened over centuries from physical choking to the mental "strangling" feeling we call worry today.
