Definition of vain

"vain" in the adjective sense

1. conceited, egotistic, egotistical, self-conceited, swollen, swollen-headed, vain

characteristic of false pride having an exaggerated sense of self-importance

"a conceited fool"

"an attitude of self-conceited arrogance"

"an egotistical disregard of others"

"so swollen by victory that he was unfit for normal duty"

"growing ever more swollen-headed and arbitrary"

"vain about her clothes"

2. bootless, fruitless, futile, sleeveless, vain

unproductive of success

"a fruitless search"

"futile years after her artistic peak"

"a sleeveless errand"

"a vain attempt"

Source: WordNet® (An amazing lexical database of English)

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Quotations for vain

Without money all is vain.

Nature does nothing in vain.

An old dog barks not in vain. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Not a vanity is given in vain. [ Pope ]

Now all is done that men can do
And all is done in vain. [ Burns ]

Who talks much, must talk in vain. [ Gay ]

Authority intoxicates,
And makes mere sots of magistrates;
The fumes of it invade the brain.
And make men giddy, proud and vain;
By this the fool commands the wise;
The noble with the base complies;
The sot assumes the role of wit.
And cowards make the base submit. [ Butler ]

Vain-glory blossoms, but never bears. [ Proverb ]

Fortune, my friend, I've often thought
Is weak, if Art assist her not:
So equally all Arts are vain,
If Fortune help them not again. [ Sheridan ]

To so perverse a sex all grace is vain. [ Dryden ]

Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good. [ Shakespeare ]

No more delay, vain boaster, but begin. [ Dryden ]

Destroy his fib, or sophistry - in vain!
The creature's at his dirty work again. [ Pope ]

True, I talk of dreams.
Which are the children of an idle brain.
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy. [ William Shakespeare ]

Vain is the world, but only to the vain. [ Young ]

Weep no more, lady, weep no more.
Thy sorrow is in vain;
For violets plucked, the sweetest showers
Will never make grow again. [ Percy ]

And weep the more because I weep in vain. [ Gray ]

Vain, very vain, my weary search to find
That bliss which only centres in the mind. [ Goldsmith ]

World's use is cold, world's love is vain.
World's cruelty is bitter bane
But pain is not the fruit of pain. [ E. B. Browning ]

And panting Time toiled after him in vain. [ Samuel Johnson ]

Sow truth, if thou the truth wouldst reap;
Who sows the false will reap the vain;
Erect and sound thy conscience keep,
From hollow words and deeds refrain. [ Horatius Bonar ]

Men are but children of a larger growth;
Our appetites are apt to change as theirs,
And full as craving, too, and full as vain. [ Dryden ]

Silence that wins, where eloquence is vain. [ William Hayley ]

Existence may be borne, and the deep root
Of life and sufferance make its firm abode
In bare and desolate bosoms: mute
The camel labors with the heaviest load.
And the wolf dies in silence: Not bestowed
In vain should such examples be; if they.
Things of ignoble or of savage mood,
Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay
May temper it to bear - it is but for a day. [ Byron ]

Sweet is true love though given in vain,
And sweet is death that puts an end to pain. [ Alfred Tennyson ]

Who thinks all science, as all virtue, vain. [ Dryden ]

But, O vain boast! Who can control his fate? [ William Shakespeare ]

He gains a great deal who loses a vain hope. [ Italian Proverb ]

It is in vain to dislike the current fashion. [ Proverb ]

Yes - the same sin that overthrew the angels,
And of all sins most easily besets
Mortals the nearest to the angelic nature:
The vile are only vain; the great are proud. [ Byron ]

Affliction is not sent in vain -
From that good God who chastens whom He loves! [ Southey ]

Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain,
Which, with pain purchased doth inherit pain. [ William Shakespeare ]

The study of vain things is laborious idleness. [ Proverb ]

Heaven and earth fight in vain against a dunce! [ Schiller ]

The best-concerted schemes men lay for fame.
Die fast away; only themselves die faster.
The far-famed sculptor, and the laurelled bard,
Those bold insurancers of deathless fame,
Supply their little feeble aids in vain. [ Blair ]

Unless what we do is useful, our glory is vain. [ Phaedrus ]

Without a genius, learning soars in vain;
And, without learning, genius sinks again;
Their force united, crowns the sprightly reign. [ Elphinston ]

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean, - roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin - his control
Stops with the shore. [ Byron ]

Take not His name, who made thy mouth, in vain;
It gets thee nothing, and hath no excuse. [ George Herbert ]

Those dreams, that on the silent night intrude,
And with false flitting shades our minds delude,
Jove never sends us downward from the skies;
Nor can they from infernal mansions rise;
But are all mere productions of the brain,
And fools consult interpreters in vain. [ Swift ]

Money spent on the brain is never spent in vain. [ Proverb ]

Why is the hearse with scutcheons blazon'd round,
And with the nodding plume of ostrich crown'd?
No: the dead know it not, nor profit gain;
It only serves to prove the living vain. [ Gay ]

Fancy brings us as many vain hopes as idle fears. [ Humboldt ]

Vain-glorious man, when fluttering wind does blow
In his light wings, is lifted up to sky;
The scorn of knighthood and true chivalry,
To think, without desert of gentle deed
And noble worth, to be advanced high,
Such praise is shame, but honour, virtue's meed.
Doth bear the fairest flower in honourable seed. [ Spenser ]

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll;
Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul. [ Pope ]

If wrong our hearts, our heads are right in vain. [ Young ]

Thou art gone from my gaze like a beautiful dream.
And I seek thee in vain by the meadow and stream. [ George Linley ]

It is in vain to use words when deeds are expected. [ Proverb ]

Where vain-glory reigns, folly is prime counsellor. [ Proverb ]

To be vain is rather a mark of humility than pride. [ Swift ]

As one who in some frightful dream would shun
His pressing foe, labors in vain to run
And his own slowness in his sleep bemoans.
In short thick sighs, weak cries, and tender groans. [ Dryden ]

When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain. [ Shakespeare ]

Weep not, sweet queen, for trickling tears are vain. [ William Shakespeare ]

His resolve remains unshaken; tears are shed in vain. [ Virgil ]

It is in vain to cast your net where there is no fish. [ Proverb ]

Where words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain.
For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain. [ William Shakespeare, King Richard II, Act II. Sc.1 ]

In vain is the mill-clack if the miller his hearing lack. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

The heart is a vain heart, a vagabond and unstable heart. [ F. Quarles ]

They say, the tongues of dying men
Enforce attention, like deep harmony;
Where words are scarce, they're seldom spent in vain;
For they breathe truth, that breathe their words in pain. [ William Shakespeare ]

It is in vain to speak reason, where it will not be heard. [ Proverb ]

It is in vain to kick, after you have once put on fetters. [ Proverb ]

To teach an ass to obey the rein, (i.e. to labour in vain.) [ Proverb ]

Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]

Blasphemous words betray the vain foolishness of the speaker. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

It is altogether vain to learn wisdom, and yet live foolishly. [ Proverb ]

Kill the lion's whelp; you will strive in vain when he is grown. [ Proverb ]

We gain justice, judgment, with years, or else years are in vain. [ Owen Meredith ]

So vain is the belief that the sequestered path has fewest flowers. [ Thomas Doubleday ]

Surely man is a being wonderfully vain, changeable, and vacillating. [ Montaigne ]

A man gains nothing by being vain-glorious, but contempt and hatred. [ Proverb ]

Earnest men never think in vain, though their thoughts may be errors. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

Vexed sailors curse the rain for which poor shepherds prayed in vain. [ Waller ]

To be a man's own fool is bad enough; but the vain man is everybody's. [ William Penn ]

To be vain of one's rank or place is to disclose that one is below it. [ Stanislaus ]

When a man is set upon his own ruin, it is in vain to reason with him. [ Proverb ]

My tongue within my lips I rein. For who talks much must talk in vain. [ Gay ]

The praise that comes of love does not make us vain, but humble rather. [ J. M. Barrie ]

To lament the past is vain; what remains is to look for hope in futurity. [ Johnson ]

Sensitive people wish to be loved; vain people wish only to be preferred. [ Levis ]

A man who finds no satisfaction in himself seeks for it in vain elsewhere. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

It is vain to be always looking toward the future and never acting toward it. [ J. F. Boyes ]

Away! we know that tears are vain, that death never heeds nor hears distress. [ Byron ]

All affectation is the vain and ridiculous attempt of poverty to appear rich. [ Lavater ]

One whom the music of his own vain tongue doth ravish like enchanting harmony. [ William Shakespeare ]

The multitude unawed is insolent; Once seized with fear, contemptible and vain. [ Mallet ]

These are the effects of doting age, - vain doubts and idle cares and overcaution. [ Dryden ]

When a man finds not repose in himself it is in vain for him to seek it elsewhere. [ From the French ]

It is in vain for a man to be born fortunate, if he be unfortunate in his marriage. [ Dacier ]

To dazzle let the vain design: to raise the thought, and touch the heart, be thine. [ Pope ]

Is beauty vain because it will fade? Then are earth's green robe and heaven's light vain. [ Pierpont ]

Resolution is independent of great age, but without it one lives a hundred years in vain. [ Chinese Proverb ]

Men are made by nature unequal. It is vain, therefore, to treat them as if they were equal. [ Froude ]

Do what good thou canst unknown; and be not vain of what ought rather to be felt than seen. [ William Penn ]

It is vain to trust in wrong; as much of evil, so much of loss, is the formula of human history. [ Theodore Parker ]

Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised. [ Bible ]

Praise from the common people is generally false, and rather follows vain persons than virtuous ones. [ Bacon ]

It is vain for the coward to fly; death follows close behind; it is by defying it that the brave escape. [ Voltaire ]

Too high an appreciation of our own talents is the chief cause why experience preaches to us all in vain. [ Colton ]

Excess in apparel is another costly folly. The very trimming of the vain world would clothe all the naked one. [ William Penn ]

Thrice I attempted to throw my arms round her neck there, and her ghost, thrice clutched in vain, eluded my grasp. [ Virgil ]

The highest reach of a news-writer is an empty reasoning on policy, and vain conjectures on the public management. [ La Bruyere ]

Long customs are not easily broken: he that attempts to change the course of his own life very often labors in vain. [ Johnson ]

What reason would grope for in vain, spontaneous impulse ofttimes achieves at a stroke, with light and pleasureful guidance. [ Goethe ]

It is in vain to expect any advantage from our profession of the truth, if we be not sincerely just and honest in our actions. [ Rev. Dr. Sharp ]

All day the rain bathed the dark hyacinths in vain; the flood may pour from morn till night, nor wash the pretty Indian white. [ Hafiz ]

Social life is filled with doubts and vain aspirings; solitude, when the imagination is dethroned, is turned to weariness and ennui. [ Miss L. E. Landon ]

A look of intelligence in men is what regularity of features is in women; it is a style of beauty to which the most vain may aspire. [ La Bruyere ]

It is vain to trust in wrong; it is like erecting a building upon a frail foundation, and which will directly be sure to topple over. [ Hosea Ballou ]

It is the vain endeavour to make ourselves what we are not that has strewn history with so many broken purposes and lives left in the rough. [ Lowell ]

Glory darts her soul-pervading ray on thrones and cottages, regardless still of all the artificial nice distinctions vain human customs make. [ Hannah More ]

Complaints are vain; we will try to do better another time. Tomorrow and tomorrow. A few designs and a few failures, and the time of designing is past. [ Johnson ]

Dreams are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy; which is as thin of substance as the air, and more inconstant than the wind. [ William Shakespeare ]

As a man may be eating all day, and for want of digestion is never nourished, so these endless readers may cram themselves in vain with intellectual food. [ Dr. I. Watts ]

He that taketh his own cares upon himself loads himself in vain with an uneasy burden. I will cast all my cares on God; He hath bidden me; they cannot burden Him. [ Bishop Hall ]

It is vain for you to expect, it is impudent for you to ask of God forgiveness on your own behalf, if you refuse to exercise this forgiving temper with respect to others. [ Hoadley ]

With vivid words your just conceptions grace. Much truth compressing in a narrow space; Then many shall peruse, but few complain, And envy frown, and critics snarl in vain. [ Pindar ]

Were not this desire of fame very strong, the difficulty of obtaining it, and the danger of losing it when obtained, would be sufficient to deter a man from so vain a pursuit. [ Addison ]

Literature is a mere step to knowledge; and the error often lies in our identifying one with the other. Literature may, perhaps, make us vain; true knowledge must make us humble. [ Mrs. John Sanford ]

A proud bigot, who is vain enough to think that he can deceive even God by affected zeal, and throwing the veil of holiness over vices, damns all mankind by the word of his power. [ Boileau ]

We protract the career of time by employment, we lengthen the duration of our lives by wise thoughts and useful actions. Life to him who wishes not to have lived in vain is thought and action. [ Zimmermann ]

Great people and champions are special gifts of God, whom He gives and preserves; they do their work and achieve great actions, not with vain imaginations or cold and sleepy cogitations, but by motion of God. [ Luther ]

Their origin is commonly unknown; for the practice often continues when the cause has ceased, and concerning superstitious ceremonies it is in vain to conjecture; for what reason did not dictate, reason cannot explain. [ Dr. Johnson ]

He that first likened glory to a shadow did better than he was aware of. They are both of them things excellently vain. Glory also, like a shadow, goes sometimes before the body, and sometimes in length infinitely exceeds it. [ Montaigne ]

I pick up favourite quotations and store them in my mind as ready armour, offensive or defensive, amid the struggle of this turbulent existence. Of these there is a very favourite one from Thomson: Attach thee firmly to the virtuous deeds
And offices of life; to life itself,
With all its vain and transient joys, sit loose. [ Burns ]

Renown is not to be sought, and all pursuit of it is vain. A person may, indeed, by skillful conduct and various artificial means, make a sort of name for himself: but if the inner jewel is wanting, all is vanity, and will not last a day. [ Goethe ]

Love can take what shape he pleases; and when once begun his fiery inroad in the soul, how vain the after knowledge which his presence gives! We weep or rave; but still he lives, and lives master and lord, amidst pride and tears and pain. [ Barry Cornwall ]

True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshaled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. [ Webster ]

Why doth Fate, that often bestows thousands of souls on a conqueror or tyrant, to be the sport of his passions, so often deny to the tenderest and most feeling hearts one kindred one on which to lavish their affections? Why is it that Love must so often sigh in vain for an object, and Hate never? [ Richter ]

Of him that hopes to be forgiven it is indispensably required that he forgive. It is, therefore, superfluous to urge any other motive. On this great duty eternity is suspended, and to him that refuses to practise it, the throne of mercy is inaccessible, and the Saviour of the world has been born in vain. [ Johnson ]

Did you ever hear of a man who had striven all his life faithfully and singly towards an object, and in no measure obtained it? If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated? Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them, - that it was a vain endeavor? [ Thoreau ]

Charms which, like flowers, lie on the surface and always glitter, easily produce vanity; hence women, wits, players, soldiers, are vain, owing to their presence, figure and dress. On the contrary, other excellences, which lie down like gold and are discovered with difficulty, leave their possessors modest and proud. [ Richter ]

The names of great painters are like passing-bells: in the name of Velasquez you hear sounded the fall of Spain; in the name of Titian, that of Venice; in the name of Leonardo, that of Milan; in the name of Raphael, that of Rome. And there is profound justice in this, for in proportion to the nobleness of the power is the guilt of its use for purposes vain or vile; and hitherto the greater the art, the more surely has it been used, and used solely, for the decoration of pride or the provoking of sensuality. [ Ruskin ]

Some authors write nonsense in a clear style, and others sense in an obscure one; some can reason without being able to persuade, others can persuade without being able to reason; some dive so deep that they descend into darkness, and others soar so high that they give us no light; and some, in a vain attempt to be cutting and dry, give us only that which is cut and dried. We should labor, therefore, to treat with ease of things that are difficult; with familiarity, of things that are novel; and with perspicuity, of things that are profound. [ Colton ]

The first being that rushes to the recollection of a soldier or a sailor, in his heart's difficulty, is his mother; she clings to his memory and affection in the midst of all the f orgetf ulness and hardihood induced by a roving life; the last message he leaves is for her; his last whisper breathes her name. The mother, as she instills the lessons of piety and filial obligation into the heart of her infant son, should always feel that her labor is not in vain. She may drop into the grave, but she has left behind her influences that will work for her. The bow is broken, but the arrow is sped, and will do its ofiice. [ A. H. Motte ]

When I look upon the tombs of the great, every motion of envy dies; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire forsake me: when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tombs of the parents themselves, I reflect how vain it is to grieve for those whom we must quickly follow; when I see kings lying beside those who deposed them, when I behold rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men who divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the frivolous competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. [ Addison ]

vain in Scrabble®

The word vain is playable in Scrabble®, no blanks required.

Scrabble® Letter Score: 7

Highest Scoring Scrabble® Play In The Letters vain:

VAIN
(33)
 

All Scrabble® Plays For The Word vain

VAIN
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The 78 Highest Scoring Scrabble® Plays For Words Using The Letters In vain

VAIN
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vain in Words With Friends™

The word vain is playable in Words With Friends™, no blanks required.

Words With Friends™ Letter Score: 9

Highest Scoring Words With Friends™ Play In The Letters vain:

VAIN
(57)
 

All Words With Friends™ Plays For The Word vain

VAIN
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The 83 Highest Scoring Words With Friends™ Plays Using The Letters In vain

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Words within the letters of vain

2 letter words in vain (3 words)

3 letter words in vain (2 words)

4 letter words in vain (1 word)

vain + 1 blank (6 words)

Words containing the sequence vain

Words that start with vain (8 words)

Words with vain in them (1 word)

Words that end with vain (1 word)

Word Growth involving vain

Shorter words in vain

ai

in

Longer words containing vain

vainer

vainest

vainful

vainglorious

vainglory

vainly

vainness