Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- n. Tragic flaw.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. The tragic flaw of the protagonist in a literary tragedy.
- n. : sin
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- n. the character flaw or error of a tragic hero that leads to his downfall
Etymologies
Examples
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It was for Alexander a tragic flaw, or hamartia, a Greek word meaning to miss the mark when shooting an arrow Christians would later use the same word to mean “sin”.
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Your hamartia is your: a. tragic flaw that leads to your downfall.
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Most common, however, is "hamartia," a term from archery meaning to "miss the mark" particularly by falling short.
"Should I stay with my girlfriend after she gave up sex for religion?"
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Yet in every Greek tragedy the catalyst for the protagonist’s downfall is hamartia, from the Greek hamartanein, a term that describes an archer missing the target.
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In essence, hamartia means “mistake,” pure and simple—although the mistake is never pure and rarely simple.
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The ancient Greek word for sin, hamartia, is an archery term that refers to missing the mark.
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The Greek word for sin in this passage is hamartia, not hamartano.
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In their most damning similarity, the contrasting hamartia of Clinton and Bush led them each to make the same tragic mistake in 2003.
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Hubris, whatever its origin, was often the hamartia, or fatal character flaw, which doomed the protagonists in Greek tragedy.
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It's as if Sesame Street is drawing on medievalism to portray the Classical concept of hamartia in King Minus.
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