What is the difference between dislike and hate?
Dislike and hate are two words in the English language that seem to have similar meanings, but this is not the case. Hate refers to a more intense emotion than dislike, which refers to a feeling of aversion. The major difference is that hate is an emotion but dislike is just a feeling. Although they appear to be interchangeable they cannot be used as being synonymous.
A dislike of a person simply means that you don’t like this person. It can be anyone – a relative a colleague, a neighbor. Even though you don’t really have any love for this person you wouldn’t cause them any harm and would help him/her if there was danger. On the other hand, if you hate a person, it wouldn’t matter to you if some harm should befall him/her. You simply want to be rid of this person.
Thus, there is a great difference in meaning between dislike and hate. When you hate a person you have no feelings of like or love towards him/her. When you dislike a person the feeling is not as intense. There may be just one thing about the person that you don’t like or it may be an action that gets on your nerves. There is hope in dislike that the situation will improve, but there is no hope of improvement where there is hate involved.
There is a sense of aversion associated with dislike. Hate, though, is associated with being extremely hostile towards another. You can dislike something about a friend, but when you hate someone, this person is your enemy and definitely not your friend. Hate comes from anger, but dislike is nothing more than disapproval.
Another of the differences between the terms dislike and hate is that when you dislike someone you do have feelings for this person and just dislike some of the things he does or says. When you hate someone, you have a feeling of spite inside you all the time. Hate is a very strong emotion that can have disastrous effects on the person who feels this way. Dislike is just a feeling that can go away. Hate will never go away. If you try hard enough you can get over disliking someone. It is possible that hate can be the result of a misunderstanding or ignorance about the truth of a situation.
You make a conscious choice to dislike someone. However, hate refers to intense animosity or enmity. It has unpleasant memories of the situation that led to this emotion. There are no unpleasant memories associated with the feeling of dislike. You can dislike a food, but you can hate an animal. You hate your neighbor, but you dislike books. This shows that you cannot use the words dislike and hate interchangeably.