vanitas
Americannoun
Etymology
Origin of vanitas
1905–10; Latin: literally, vanity
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Harnett had much simpler taste than his patrons, and while “Ease” is not a vanitas painting auguring death, he was known for incorporating traces of humor and irony in his paintings.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 28, 2025
Yet pronk works carried deeper meanings as the earliest forms of vanitas, a genre that uses symbolism to convey the brevity of life and futility of pleasure.
From Salon ● Mar. 10, 2024
The modern vanitas also skewers the superficial and worldly, focusing on darker truths, insidious causes and structural failures.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 3, 2022
An artistic embodiment of vanitas, a reminder of death’s inevitability, they unspool films whose formal structures and abstract narratives are based on auction house categories for classifying and selling art.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 10, 2016
Binnie burst into a loud guffaw, and cried out, "O vanitas vanitawtum!"
From The Newcomes Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family by Thackeray, William Makepeace
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
