hamartia

noun /həˈmɑː.ti.ə/

1. The tragic flaw of the protagonist in a literary tragedy.

   uncountable

   Creon's main hamartia was his excessive pride.

2. Sin.

   uncountable

   As a consequence of the primeval peripety, the Adamic fall narrated in Genesis 3, they have all inherited the catastrophic and tragic hamartia, as it were, of original sin, the engrained powerlessness of the soul to will the good, much less to do it, along with the deep disorientation of the soul's root desire.

3. A focal malformation consisting of disorganized arrangement of tissue types.

   uncountable

Where it comes from

From Ancient Greek ἁμαρτία (hamartía, “tragic failure, sinful nature”), from the verb ἁμαρτάνω (hamartánō, “to miss the mark”).

Adapted from the Wiktionary entry hamartia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

← halterehamiform →

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