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Vanity   /vˈænəti/  /vˈænɪti/   Listen
noun
Vanity  n.  (pl. vanities)  
1.
The quality or state of being vain; want of substance to satisfy desire; emptiness; unsubstantialness; unrealness; falsity. "Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity." "Here I may well show the vanity of that which is reported in the story of Walsingham."
2.
An inflation of mind upon slight grounds; empty pride inspired by an overweening conceit of one's personal attainments or decorations; an excessive desire for notice or approval; pride; ostentation; conceit. "The exquisitely sensitive vanity of Garrick was galled."
3.
That which is vain; anything empty, visionary, unreal, or unsubstantial; fruitless desire or effort; trifling labor productive of no good; empty pleasure; vain pursuit; idle show; unsubstantial enjoyment. "Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher." "Vanity possesseth many who are desirous to know the certainty of things to come." "(Sin) with vanity had filled the works of men." "Think not, when woman's transient breath is fled, That all her vanities at once are dead; Succeeding vanities she still regards."
4.
One of the established characters in the old moralities and puppet shows. See Morality, n., 5. "You... take vanity the puppet's part."
5.
6.
A cabinet built around a bathroom sink, usually with a countertop and sometimes drawers.
Synonyms: Egotism; pride; emptiness; worthlessness; self-sufficiency. See Egotism, and Pride.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Vanity" Quotes from Famous Books



... earlier General Bonaparte had declared that what the French wanted was glory and the gratification of their vanity; of liberty, he said, they knew nothing. The Emperor Napoleon, in one of his spoken musings, applied the same conception to all continental Europeans, saying that there were everywhere a few men who knew what freedom was and longed to secure it; but that the masses needed ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... always seemed to see more in what she said than she herself saw. Dorothea had little vanity, but she had the ardent woman's need to rule beneficently by making the joy of another soul. Hence the mere chance of seeing Will occasionally was like a lunette opened in the wall of her prison, giving her a glimpse of the sunny air; and this pleasure began to nullify her original ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... The innate vanity of the woman might have led one to suppose that she would let the years pass unnoticed, but not so. The old, time-honored custom of the country must be observed lest her friends might say: Senora Fernandez ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... born of this marriage in 1782 was sickly and delicate, ugly of feature, with a nose even then large enough to be absurd, her father's nose in a face as thin as a man's wrist. She had nothing of what her parents' vanity would have liked her to have. After making a fiasco on the piano at the age of five, at a concert given by her mother in her salon, she was relegated to the society of the servants. Except for a moment in the morning, she never went near her mother, who ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... recluse,— Still less as one who hates mankind—, Do I thy peaceful precincts choose; But as a student, who can find No joys in Vanity's gay Fair That for an instant can compare With those ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard


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