Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Not yielding the desired outcome; fruitless: a vain attempt.
- adj. Lacking substance or worth: vain talk.
- adj. Excessively proud of one's appearance or accomplishments; conceited.
- adj. Archaic Foolish.
- idiom. in vain To no avail; without success: Our labor was in vain.
- idiom. in vain In an irreverent or disrespectful manner: took the Lord's name in vain.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Having no real value or importance; worthless; unsubstantial; empty; trivial; idle.
- Producing no good result; destitute of force or efficacy; fruitless; ineffectual; useless; futile; unavailing.
- Light-minded; foolish; silly.
- Proud of petty things or of trifling attainments or accomplishments; elated with a high opinion of one's personal appearance, manners, or the like; courting the admiration or applause of others; conceited; self-complacent; also, proceeding from or marked by such pride or conceit: as, to be vain of one's figure or one's dress.
- Showy; ostentatious; pretentious.
- Bootless, abortive.
- See egotism.
Wiktionary
- adj. overly proud of oneself, especially when concerning appearance
- adj. having very little substance
- adj. effecting no purpose; pointless, futile.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Having no real substance, value, or importance; empty; void; worthless; unsatisfying.
- adj. Destitute of force or efficacy; effecting no purpose; fruitless; ineffectual.
- adj. Proud of petty things, or of trifling attainments; having a high opinion of one's own accomplishments with slight reason; conceited; puffed up; inflated.
- adj. Showy; ostentatious.
- n. Vanity; emptiness; -- now used only in the phrase in vain.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. unproductive of success
- adj. characteristic of false pride; having an exaggerated sense of self-importance
Etymologies
- From Middle English, from Old French vain, from Latin vānus ("empty") (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Old French, from Latin vānus, empty. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“_Then I said, I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for naught, and in vain_.”
“For people that claim to know God I hope you know that taking the name of God in vain is sin.”
“So quoting the taking of the Lord's name in vain is okay in movie reviews, but hell is off-limits.”
“GAH!!!! to many tildas, for the love of christ (thats not taking it in vain is it?), why … ..”
“Finishing the mission so our troops will not have died in vain is the most screwed up thing I have ever heard.”
“Tiny Smurfs scatter and run in vain from the whistling bombs, before being felled by blast waves and fiery explosions.”
“If, as it must be, what I have said, 'in vain,' is really the fact”
“Jesus shall come to effect, by His presence (Isa 11: 4; Da 7: 17), that which in vain is looked for, in His absence, by other means.”
“No; in vain is salvation hoped for from hills and mountains, Jer. iii.”
Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume III (Job to Song of Solomon)
“Indeed, to labour in vain is heartless and discouraging.”
Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume VI (Acts to Revelation)
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘vain’.
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Test Prep or Just for fun
Building a list for standardized test prep or just for learning some new words! Please add any words that you feel are important for the SAT/GRE/GMAT etc...
throng, morass, parley, facile, kismet, strife, jetsam, carrion, annex, harbinger, vestige, surreptitious and 575 more...
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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Dominant/Submissive
abusive, adamant, autocratic, bossy, bullheaded, bumptious, certain, cock-a-hoop, cocksure, cocky, commanding, compelling and 189 more...
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2nd part
prelude, ample, escalate, prototype, accession, acquisition, archives, zealot, indict, verdict, intimidating, timid and 454 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2046 more...
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Wierd/Cool/Random words
wikiphobia, banana, tounge, rock, guitar, tuna fish, vain, puffy, wiggle, googlewhack, leap, jette and 14 more...
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You probably think this list is about...
Don't you?
Don't you?You're so vain., You probably thin..., Carly Simon, Mick Jagger, Warren Beatty, warren beatty, I had some dreams..., You probably thin..., James Reyne or Rain, David Geffen, cravat, gavotte and 17 more...
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Vocab Words
Common words and their meanings.
Ra eh RA EH ..............whim, debilitating, grimoire, vain, morphine, shingle, muzzle, moccasin, stifle, fiend, chain of command, clandestine and 9 more...
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GRE Readings
sophistry, religious, venture, touching, slander, rotunda, singular, spurious, rhetoric, virtue, temper, tardy and 133 more...
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ymmez22's Words
despotic, fiefdom, demagogue, vignette, chavvy, esoteric, stalwarts, unpalatable, eradicated, rapacious, repugnant, zeitgeist and 89 more...
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Lillyjames's Words
uncategorized words that I enjoy
replete, unabashed, dauntless, ubiquitous, fanged, blush, flush, murmur, mercurial, dishevelled, decrepit, raven and 146 more...
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135 Offensive Shakespearean Terms
135 Offensive Shakespearean Terms =)
artless, baggage, barnacle, bawdy, beef-witted, bladder, boil-brained, bootless, brazen, cankerblossom, churlish, churrish and 123 more...
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gcherches's Words
serendipity, roadrunner, inner child, coagulant, esquire, vicissitude, idiot savant, mitigation, affirmation, affirmative, diatribe, affirmative action and 185 more...
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The Most Beautiful Words in the Engli...
mellifluous, obscure, star-crossed, undulating, solstice, messiah, audacious, solace, twilight, wanderlust, lovelorn, byzantine and 219 more...
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fifi
verbs Adj Adv noun
indulge, convene, solve, dissolve, prospect, prospective, allege, resolve, accountable, administration, amid, agenda and 407 more...
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everythingecstatic's Words
cadence, frenetic, eloquence, paradigm, nocturne, elusive, effervescence, soliloquy, plethora, elision, aqueous, transcend and 166 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for vain.
pradyumnaojha A sociable person does not posses a vain personality. Feb 15, 2013