vain.
Overly proud of oneself, especially concerning appearance; having a high opinion of one's own accomplishments with slight reason.
Meaning & usage
Overly proud of oneself, especially concerning appearance; having a high opinion of one's own accomplishments with slight reason.
Having no real substance, value, or importance; empty; void; worthless; unsatisfying.
Effecting no purpose; pointless, futile.
vain toil a vain attempt
Showy; ostentatious.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English veyn, from Old French vain, from Latin vānus (“empty”).
To frustrate.
Where this word comes from
A conversion of the adjectival form of vain. The only use of this verb in English appears c. 1628 in the writings of Owen Felltham.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.