1 that does not produce the result you want
SYNUSELESS:
She closed her eyes tightly in a vain attempt to hold back the tears. * I knocked loudly in the vain hope that someone might answer.
2 (disapproving) too proud of your own appearance, abilities or achievements
SYNCONCEITED:
She's too vain to wear glasses.
seealsoVANITY
IDIOMS
in vain without success:
They tried in vain to persuade her to go. * She waited in vain for her son to return. * All our efforts were in vain.
moreatNAMEn.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for vain is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is vain a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, vain is tagged as adjective.
Does vain appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — vain appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
