Hubris is excessive pride or self-confidence that leads a character to disregard divine or moral limits. In Greek tragedy it often precedes the hero’s downfall.

The hubristic figure oversteps, treats others—including the gods—with contempt, and trusts too completely in personal power or judgment. Creon’s stubbornness in Antigone and the arrogance of many tragic kings exemplify the pattern. Retribution, or nemesis, typically follows. The concept entered later literature and everyday speech as a name for dangerous overreaching.

Hubris is not ordinary vanity. It implies a transgression against a larger order—cosmic, social, or ethical. The audience both condemns the excess and recognizes the human temptation toward it. In modern usage the word sometimes softens into a synonym for ordinary arrogance, yet its tragic force remains available to writers who restore the sense of limits being defied.

Pride that refuses to acknowledge any boundary higher than itself is hubris.