What does "hamartia" mean?

The tragic flaw of the protagonist in a literary tragedy.

What is a synonym for "hamartia"?

Common synonyms include: aberration, delusion, distortion, errancy, fallacy, falseness.

Pronounced //həˈmɑː.ti.ə//.

//həˈmɑː.ti.ə// noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Noun

1
The tragic flaw of the protagonist in a literary tragedy. Greek, uncountable, usually
"Creon's main hamartia was his excessive pride."
2
the character flaw or error of a tragic hero that leads to their downfall wordnet
3
Sin. uncountable, usually
"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."
4
A focal malformation consisting of disorganized arrangement of tissue types. uncountable, usually

"Creon's main hamartia was his excessive pride."

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

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.