LOGOI

The corpus record — Latin

vanitas

vanitas · f

emptiness

Generated live from the audited Latin corpus — every figure on this page is a database query, not prose from memory.

Where it lives

Densest 12 of 66 attested works shown, by occurrences per 10,000 attested tokens.

What it meant

vānĭtas — Lewis & Short

vānĭtas, ātis, f.vanus.

I Lit., emptiness, nothingness, nullity, want of reality: nulla in caelo nec fortuna, nec temeritas, nec erratio, nec vanitas inest; contra omnis ordo, veritas, ratio, constantia, Cic. N. D. 2, 21, 56: ne vanitas itineris ludibrio esset, uselessness, purposelessness, Liv. 40, 22, 5: Romanis Gallici tumultus adsueti, etiam vanitates notae sunt, id. 38, 17, 5 Weissenb. —
B Esp., falsity, falsehood, deception, untruth, untrustworthiness, fickleness, etc.
1 Absol.: non pudet Vanitatis? Ter. Phorm. 3, 2, 41: imbuimur erroribus, ut vanitati veritas cedat, Cic. Tusc. 3, 1, 2: mercatura ... multa undique apportans, multisque sine vanitate impertiens, etc., id. Off. 1, 42, 151: nec vero quicquam turpius est vanitate, id. ib. 1, 42, 150: quamvis blanda ista vanitas apud eos valeat, etc., id. Lael. 26, 99: cum ad vanitatem accessit auctoritas, id. ib. 25, 94.—Plur.: Magicae vanitates, Plin. 26, 4, 9, § 18; cf. id. 27, 8, 35, § 57.—
2 With gen.: quid de iis existimandum est, qui orationis vanitatem adhibuerunt? Cic. Off. 3, 14, 58: opinionum vanitas, id. Leg. 1, 10, 29: suum imperium minui per vanitatem populi, fickleness, Liv. 44, 22, 10: multa circa hoc non Magorum solum vanitate, sed etiam Pythagoricorum, Plin. 22, 8, 9, § 20 Jan.—
II Trop., vanity, vainglory: huic homini non minor vanitas inerat quam audacia, Sall. C. 23, 2; id. J. 38, 1: qui se propalam per vanitatem jactassent tamquam amicos Persei, Liv. 45, 31, 7: vanitas atque jactatio, Quint. 11, 2, 22: vanitas atque insolentia, Suet. Vit. 10: Quintius Atticus consul umbrā honoris et suāmet vanilate monstratus, Tac. H. 3, 73: nec Agricola prosperitate rerum in vanitatem usus, etc., id. Agr. 18 fin.: Statius veniam ... vanitate exitūs corrupit, id. A. 15, 71.

In the wild

6 of 159 attestations shown.

Where it came from

No etymology authority pointer is recorded for this lemma yet — an honest gap, not an omission.

Latin text and lemmatization derived from the Perseus Digital Library (canonical-latinLit), CC BY-SA 4.0. Lewis & Short (public domain) via Perseus. This derived data is shared under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 license.