Meaning
Insolent pride or overweening self-confidence, especially the kind that blinds someone to risk and invites downfall. In modern English it is strongly pejorative and very common in commentary on politics, business, and sport, often implying a punishment to come, as in the pairing with nemesis. This narrows and moralises the older Greek sense of violent, outrageous behaviour toward others. Strongly negative, literary-to-journalistic in register, and almost always implies a coming reckoning. Regional use: General English (borrowed from Greek).
Origin
From Greek hybris, 'wanton violence, insolence, outrage', in its oldest sense presumption toward the gods, with the related verb hybrizein meaning to run riot or treat others with contempt. In Athenian law and tragedy, hybris was the arrogant outrage that provokes divine retribution, and English still borrows that narrative logic. The adjective hubristic is recorded from 1831 and the noun hubris from 1884 (per both Etymonline and Merriam-Webster), arising within classical scholarship before broadening into general use; the more classically exact spelling hybris appeared in English around 1911, partly through translations of Nietzsche.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- hubrises
- hybris
Usage Examples
- Analysts blamed the bank's collapse on sheer hubris at the top.
- Her hubris in promising a finished product by March became obvious when the deadline slipped.
- The champion's hubris - skipping training camp to film commercials - cost him the title.