vain

Wall Street is famous for taking Santa Claus’s good name in vain.

From MarketWatch ● Oct. 26, 2026

Ultimately he blew $825,000 and two decades of work on the venture in vain.

From Barron's ● Oct. 8, 2026

And sneaky: They didn’t try to steal sensitive data, but spent massive resources in a vain effort to obfuscate logs of their activities.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 2, 2026

But Kaepernick doesn’t leave readers feeling that his work was in vain, or that he is without hope.

From Salon ● Sep. 29, 2026

He was more vain than a Real Housewife of Beverly Hills and blew most of his salary on top-of-the-line bodywash and Versace aftershave.

From "City of the Plague God" by Sarwat Chadda

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 lived on bread and tea, and I spent my time in vain answering of advertisements, and vainer walks to addresses I had noted.

From The Three Impostors or The Transmutations by Arthur Machen

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

But now we know which is the vainest.

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