vain
Example Sentences
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Wall Street is famous for taking Santa Claus’s good name in vain.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 26, 2026
I’ve searched in vain for Norm Macdonald-like labels, “And now, the effective-altruism-spun news.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 25, 2026
His superpower seems to be the ability to cosplay a vain summer camp counselor in the Adirondacks from a bad Hallmark comedy.
From Salon ● Oct. 2, 2026
Connor's sensational 40/20 with two minutes remaining ultimately was in vain as Palasia's ball-carrying arm had already hit the floor in the build-up.
From BBC ● Sep. 25, 2026
Alice Paul believed that the suffering of the protesters would not be in vain.
From "Votes for Women!" by Winifred Conkling
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
"I am vainer than I thought myself," she mused.
From A Vanished Hand by Sarah Doudney
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
The purple sits well on him as he impersonates one of the vainest, cruelest, weakest monarchs the English ever had to tolerate.
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
Vocabulary lists containing vain
The Vocabulary.com Top 1000
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"Romeo and Juliet" by William Shakespeare, Act I
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Abraham Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" (1863)
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