vain

Hundreds of young Russians gathered outside a Moscow courthouse where Yabloko’s bespectacled chairman, Nikolai Rybakov, who has a mop of brown hair and looks like a small-town librarian, spent hours appealing the ruling in vain.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 22, 2026

"Otherwise, everything I was fighting for will have been in vain."

From BBC ● Jul. 17, 2026

In vain, officials have urged locals to avoid the beaches -- exposed areas that offer no protection from Russian aerial barrages.

From Barron's ● Jun. 30, 2026

Filipino fans formed unmoving lines, hoping in vain to squeeze into the ludicrously limited capacity of Court 6 just to catch a glimpse of her main draw debut.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 30, 2026

While they waited for their supply of metals to be weighed out, Ranofer tried in vain to devise such questions.

From "The Golden Goblet" by Eloise Jarvis McGraw

But are vainer men than me really cultivating their monobrows?

From The Guardian ● May 3, 2017

You might even be vainer for some people might by the label in the belief that is better quality and thus a better value.

From New York Times ● Feb. 12, 2016

For clients who are vainer about their hearing than their eyesight, Otarion, Inc., Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., has designed a hearing aid housed in standard, horn-rimmed glasses.

From Time Magazine Archive

Ulape had two boxes of earrings, for she was vainer than I, and when she put them into her baskets, she drew a thin mark with blue clay across her nose and cheekbones.

From "Island of the Blue Dolphins" by Scott O'Dell

She had already wasted too much in vain physical struggling and in vainer emotional outbursts.

From Heart of the Blue Ridge by Waldron Baily

Self-defense, the historian wrote, naturally required “the perpetual repetition” of what he called “the vainest and most disgusting of the pronouns”: the first-person singular.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026

This vainest of Falstaffs is a genuine slob whom Boritt houses in a shabby bachelor pad wallpapered in purple zebra stripes.

From Washington Post ● Aug. 15, 2021

For years D.C. had the vainest of owners, but he was balanced by Bobby Beathard and Joe Gibbs, two deft managers of ego — both theirs and others.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 13, 2013

Unexpectedly, he discovers in Sondra Finchley, beautiful heiress, a sweetheart who will fulfill his dearest, vainest dreams.

From Time Magazine Archive

The vainest, most slap-happy and irreverent of men, in the presence of redwoods, goes under a spell of wonder and respect.

From "Travels with Charley in Search of America" by John Steinbeck