Vain Meaning: Self Admiring, Pointless and the Bible Sense

Two senses of vain

1. Conceited. Overly concerned with your own looks, talents or importance, and eager for praise. "He is too vain to wear his glasses in photos." This sense describes people.
2. Useless or unsuccessful. Having no effect or no real value. "She made a vain effort to catch the bus." This sense describes efforts, hopes, words and promises.

To define vain in one breath: empty, whether of modesty or of results. Both senses grow from the same Latin root meaning empty. A conceited person is "full of themselves" but, the word suggests, empty underneath; a vain attempt is empty of results.

Vain in example sentences

• My uncle is a little vain about his hair and will not go out in the wind without a hat.
• Rescuers dug through the night in a vain hope of finding more survivors.
• Don't be so vain; nobody is looking at the tiny mark on your shirt.
• All our warnings were in vain; he bought the car anyway.
• The team vainly tried to equalise in the last minutes of the match.

The phrase in vain, explained

In vain means without success or to no purpose. It usually comes after the verb: they waited in vain, I looked in vain for my keys. It can also follow be: his sacrifice was not in vain, a phrase often used to say that a loss still achieved something meaningful.

You will also see vain before nouns in this sense: a vain attempt, vain hopes, vain promises. And the adverb vainly can mean either uselessly (she vainly tried the door) or conceitedly, though the first use is more frequent.

Vain meaning in the Bible

So what does vain mean in the Bible? The key is that older English translations mostly use the empty or worthless sense, not the conceited one.

• Taking God's name in vain. One of the Ten Commandments, in Exodus 20:7 and Deuteronomy 5:11, forbids taking the Lord's name in vain. The Hebrew word translated vain, shav, carries ideas of emptiness and falsehood. Jewish tradition has often read the commandment as forbidding false or needless oaths sworn in God's name, while many Christians also apply it to careless or disrespectful use of God's name in speech. It is counted as the second commandment in Catholic and Lutheran numbering and the third in Jewish, Orthodox and most Protestant numbering.
• Labour in vain. Psalm 127 opens with the idea that unless God builds the house, the builders' work is in vain, meaning useless.
• Vain repetitions. In older translations of Matthew 6:7, Jesus warns against praying with empty, repeated phrases.

For the related ideas of irreverent speech, see blasphemy, and browse more scripture terms in faith and belief.

Vain, vein or vane?

All three sound exactly the same. A memory trick: the vein with an e carries blood, and the vane with an n spins in the wind like a fan. A common slip is writing "in a similar vain" when you mean in a similar vein, meaning in the same style.

Vain compared with proud, arrogant and conceited

Vain centres on looks and the wish to be admired. Conceited is close, stressing an inflated opinion of yourself. Arrogant adds looking down on others. Proud may be a good thing (a parent beaming at a graduation), while vain almost never is. The opposite qualities are modesty and humility. A related old word, vainglory, means boastful pride in your own achievements. Other character words sit in people and feelings.

Word origins: vain came into English around 1300 through Old French from Latin vanus, empty. The phrase in vain is modelled on Latin in vanum, and the conceited sense of describing a person proud of trifles is recorded in English by the late 1600s.