# vain

Pronunciation: say "VAYN" /veɪn/

## Adjective

1. Too proud of oneself, especially of one's looks, and thinking highly of one's own achievements with little reason.
   - Simple: Thinking too well of yourself, especially of how you look or what you have done.
   - _He was too vain to wear his glasses, so he squinted at the menu all evening._
   - _He's so vain that he checks his reflection in every shop window he walks past on the way to work._
2. Failing to accomplish any purpose, and so pointless.
   - Simple: Not getting the result you wanted, so it was useless.
   - _Firefighters made a vain attempt to save the old mill before the roof collapsed._
   - _After hours of vain searching, they gave up on finding the ring in the sand._
3. Lacking real substance, value, or importance, and so empty and unsatisfying.
   - Simple: Empty and worthless, with nothing real or important in it.
   - _The campaign was full of vain promises that no one expected to be kept._
   - _He chased fame and money, only to find them vain and hollow in the end._
4. Showy and designed to impress others by display.
   - Simple: Too fancy and made to look impressive.

## Verb

5. To frustrate something, causing it to come to nothing. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: To stop something from working or succeeding.

## Origin

**Meanings 1–4** — Latin vānus ("empty") passed into Old French as vain and then into Middle English as veyn.
**Meaning 5** — A conversion of the adjective vain into a verb. Its only known use in English is c. 1628, in the writings of Owen Felltham.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/vain (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).