It's the Word of the Day podcast for July 21st.
Today's word is hubris spelled H-U-B-R-I-S.
Hubris is a noun.
It's a formal and literary word that refers to a great or foolish amount of pride or confidence.
Here's the word used in a sentence from The Atlantic by Charlie Worsell.
The film was billed to me as an attempt to capture the real power and bumbling hubris of a bunch of arrogant and wealthy men who tried to rewire the world and find themselves in way over their heads.
English picked up both the concept of hubris and the term for that particular brand of cockiness from the ancient Greeks who considered hubris a dangerous character flaw capable of provoking the wrath of the gods.
In classical Greek tragedy,
hubris was often a fatal shortcoming that brought about the fall of the tragic hero.
Typically,
overconfidence led the hero to attempt to overstep the boundaries of human limitations and assume a godlike status.
In response, the gods inevitably humbled the offender with a sharp reminder of human mortality.
Take, for example, the story of Phaeton, a mortal son of the sun god Helios.
In his hubris,
Phaeton drives his father's son chariot into the heavens but loses control of its horses.
The chariot begins to scorch the earth and Zeus strikes Phaeton down with a thunderbolt.
With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.
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