vain

Instead of the happy family reunion they'd always imagined, Godwin's first trip to the US was spent searching New York in vain for the father he'd waited years to reconnect with.

From BBC ● Sep. 11, 2026

Regardless of reactions from his supporters, Abdurahmanovic said attempts to revise his legacy were in vain.

From Barron's ● Aug. 28, 2026

The doctor of the diaries comes across as all too human—stubborn, biased, vain and vindictive.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 27, 2026

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

From BBC ● Jul. 17, 2026

It did not take long to gather my “things”: my hat and an undervest that was drying after a vain attempt to get it clean in the much-used basin water.

From "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom

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

It is hardly possible that he should be vainer than man; and in the dog, vanity is a far simpler and more lovable thing than the complex and offensive passion in his master. 

From Rustic Sounds and Other Studies in Literature and Natural History by Sir Francis Darwin

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

In 1622 history's richest and most lavish painter was retained by the vainest and most powerful woman in France to create an appropriate tribute to herself.

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