(superl.) Having no real substance, value, or importance; empty; void; worthless; unsatisfying.
(superl.) Destitute of forge or efficacy; effecting no purpose; fruitless; ineffectual; as, vain toil; a vain attempt.
(superl.) Proud of petty things, or of trifling attainments; having a high opinion of one's own accomplishments with slight reason; conceited; puffed up; inflated.
(superl.) Showy; ostentatious.
(n.) Vanity; emptiness; -- now used only in the phrase in vain.
Example Sentences:
(1) For example, if we purchase new examination equipment without any consideration or if we decide what type of equipment to introduce according to the common advice of the purchase committee of the hospital or the medical school, then we cannot design an ideal system of laboratory examinations and are forced to invest a large sum of money in vain.
(2) The George Bush campaign juggernaut hit the first serious pothole of its cash-fuelled drive to the presidency yesterday, as the Texas governor tried in vain to fend off questions about whether he had used cocaine as a young man.
(3) Full set list, show one (thanks to princevault.com ) Take Me With U (acoustic) Raspberry Beret (acoustic) U Got The Look (acoustic) Instrumental jam (acoustic) Train In Vain (acoustic) Q & A (1) incl.
(4) VaIN rarely is an isolated lesion and frequently is preceded by, or coexists with, other types of premalignant genital squamous neoplasia.
(5) He’s the kind of self-styled intellectual journalist in politics who caused so much trouble in 20th century politics, not a bad man, decent enough in his way, but not as smart as he thinks he is, vain with it.
(6) For long spells, West Ham searched in vain for inspiration as they tried to find a way past Newcastle United’s defence and end a run of three matches without a win.
(7) Further, in a vain attempt for a boost in the Hoosier State, Cruz unveiled former rival Carly Fiorina as his running mate if he receives the nomination and was able to cajole the state’s sitting governor, Mike Pence, into an endorsement.
(8) The next few days may well determine whether, this time, such loyalty will be in vain; but, while yearning for a clarion call and what was described as "vision" in this paper's leading article yesterday, I need to pose some pretty stark questions to Guardian readers.
(9) He aims to put his newspapers, including the Times and the Sun, behind a paywall, something described by the co-founder of Twitter, Biz Stone, as a vain attempt to "put the genie back in the bottle".
(10) In vain I argued that Robin Day seemed to wear the same jacket and shirt every week, and fled back to radio."
(11) Now I can feel that my son's blood wasn't totally lost in vain.
(12) In vain will Cameron plead that blame should lie with Brown and his Labour colleagues.
(13) At a media day held to mark the completion of the training and arranged before the tragedy, soldier after soldier came forward to insist that, though they were apprehensive, they were determined to do a good job, partly to make sure that their six colleagues had not died in vain.
(14) He somehow scrambled to deuce and delighted in forcing Dimitrov to chase in vain from one side of the court to the other to go 6-5 up.
(15) Assessment of patients between 9 and 99 (mean 55) months after partial colpectomy for VAIN showed no recurrence of disease in ten patients (83%).
(16) The scientific establishment struggled in vain to produce evidence that would reassure the public.
(17) No grieving wants to go through that, and our city doesn’t want to go through that.” Murphy said an accelerated program to equip Baltimore police officers with body cameras would mean Gray “did not die in vain”.
(18) His mother has said she tried in vain to get help for him.
(19) But he flailed in vain as the police officers grabbed him, one forcing his T-shirt roughly up over his head as three or four others laid in with their wooden batons, dragging and pushing him to a line of waiting Land Cruisers and more helmeted cops.
(20) As Steve spends half his money trying in vain to keep a scowl off Michelle's face and the rest comfort eating, Liz stumped up half the cash.
Vainglorious
Definition:
(a.) Feeling or indicating vainglory; elated by vanity; boastful.
Example Sentences:
(1) It is an excruciating fly-on-the-wall witness to Allison's vainglory, Swales's self-regard for his own leadership qualities and the poor young players' overpromoted helplessness.
(2) Abbott’s few remaining apologists in the domestic media have vaingloriously announced today that our prime minister is putting the mighty US “on notice” about tax evasion.
(3) Alas for them, the gadget doesn’t let them know that all of their vainglorious conversations are already being recorded by said Old Bill.
(4) Ferguson strove to unsettle City beforehand with a calculated outburst over the allegedly vainglorious streak in the people who run City but earlier still in the week he had suggested circumspectly that these opponents are bound to win a trophy in due course.
(5) The issue is the new Scottish Labour leader, Jim Murphy, and his vainglorious boast that he is going to use mansion tax money from London and the south -east to pay for 1,000 new nurses in Scotland .
(6) The Tennyson line chosen for the heart of the Olympic Village – "To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield" – is, in the context of his poem Ulysses, hardly a feelgood slogan: it's the empty boast of a vainglorious old fart raging against senility.
(7) The medics in Planet are more misguided than vainglorious, but even in that film, we're rooting for the apes.
(8) The project had been conceived long before the crash, and in more prosperous times, might have stood as a monument to vainglorious individuality.
(9) Even defectors describe him as a skilful politician with the foresight to understand that nuclear diplomacy is a marathon, not a sprint.But the rapid rise of his youngest son, about whom the world knew practically nothing until his first official appearance with his father in 2010, has produced a vainglorious leader who, says Kim Kwang-jin, is "running too fast and doesn't know how to slow down".
(10) We all think our kids are wonderful, obviously, and the occasional thrill of vainglorious pride we feel at their achievements spills out in a humblebrag or a boastful status update to our bored acquaintances.
(11) "What I voice, I voice though my art, if that's not too vainglorious a word.
(12) It wasn’t lost because of a vainglorious Edstone [a reference to Miliband’s 8ft 6in stone on which were carved Labour’s six pledges] or a bacon sandwich.
(13) But now Saddam's vainglorious stronghold is to be turned over to a different use.
(14) Earlier in the 1960s, he had played a part in the civil war in North Yemen, the cockpit of Gamal Abdul Nasser's vainglorious attempt to impose Egyptian hegemony over the Arabian peninsula.
(15) I fired off a tweet, saying he was "despotic and deluded", something borne out by such a vainglorious statement.
(16) His “Kimpire”, as he once vaingloriously called it, has been rebuilt through targeting the failures of the police, prosecutors and spies who so willingly helped the FBI.
(17) There was no rebuttal from Labour pointing out the decent levels of growth being recorded before George Osborne choked off the recovery through his vainglorious emergency budget in June 2010 .
(18) This quixotic goal had been set a decade earlier at a United Nations general assembly special session when, under the vainglorious slogan “We can do it”, the supranational body pledged that, by 2008, the world would be “drug free”.
(19) What vainglorious egotism, this willingness to kill a party for the thing he loves.
(20) The nation's modest bank manager doesn't do the hubris, hyperbole and vainglory of his predecessor, but he allowed himself a quiet preen.