Hubris

Hubris is extreme or excessive pride, or dangerous overconfidence and complacency, often paired with arrogance; the Ancient Greek húbris is glossed as "pride, insolence, outrage." Aristotle defined it in the Rhetoric as shaming a victim "merely for your own gratification," and expressly not revenge, "not the requital of past injuries." In Greek tragedy Aeschylus used the word for transgressions against the gods, Xerxes' hubris in The Persians among them, and the mythic catalogue of the overreaching runs from Arachne to Icarus and Niobe; a second-century relief shows Nemesis treading on Hubris. Modern usage keeps the shape: pride that blinds, a "loss of contact with reality."

As a character engine it is the positive arc run backward: a flaw fed instead of corrected until it costs everything, the negative shape described in character arcs. Beside hamartia, hubris names the flavor of error a tragic hero most often makes.