tragic flaw
noun
Simple meaning
A personality trait or other characteristic of a real or fictional individual which is immoral.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
trajihkflawSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈtɹædʒɪkfˈlɔ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
chiefly literary criticism
A personality trait or other characteristic of a real or fictional individual which is immoral, destructive, or otherwise faulty and which leads to the ruin or profound suffering of that individual.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A personality trait or other characteristic of a real or fictional individual which is immoral, destructive, or otherwise faulty and which leads to the ruin or profound suffering of that individual.
Used this way, tragic flaw is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It lands hard, so it overstates anything mild. It turns up most in literature or storytelling and personal or emotional discussion contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Formal
- Intensity
- Very strong
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Strongly negative / painful
- Usage feel
- Literary and expressive
Where it naturally appears
- Literature/storytelling
- Personal/emotional discussion
Usage note
Comfortable in writing and prepared speech; in casual conversation a shorter everyday word usually sounds more natural.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.