Can homophonic kanji (in this case 怨 and 恨) be used purely to avoid repetition? I came across this sentence in : > My understanding is that , unlike , can convey not only resentment but also regret. My questions are the following: (1) Does carry anything like this connotation in the context of ""? Does "" express something less aggressive than ""? (2) Are two different kanji for used here simply to avoid repeating kanji within a short span of text? If so, does this practice generally nullify the particular connotations of the homophonic kanji in question? For example, if were used purely to avoid repetition, could it ever connote regret, or would it only express resentment?

(1)It cannot be determined whether the ”” include regret or not. More before and after sentences are needed for me to judge it.

(2)Recently even Japanese can rarely distinguish these two kanji for because "" is way more common, and almost nobody without writers of pure literature uses "". However, I suppose that your practice sentence was quoted from a pure literature, so that the author used these two different Kanji to differentiate the meaning. To avoid the repetition of same Kanji, they don't change the kanji itself but change the verb itself because they know, to be exact, every Kanji has a subtle different meaning from each other. In this case, I suppose "" contains regretful meaning, and "" express more aggressive and is pure curse to someone.

Anyway, Japanese except writers of pure literature don't use "" so much in daily life because they don't know the difference correctly.