vain

Into this maelstrom of social jockeying Dostoevsky cast the gentle Prince Myshkin, whose lack of guile makes him a figure of fun among the vain and calculating people he encounters.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 30, 2026

Opposition, however, has not been in vain, he said.

From MarketWatch ● Oct. 30, 2026

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

From Barron's ● Oct. 8, 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

I yelled, trying in vain to snatch back the envelope.

From "Glitch" by Laura Martin

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

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