Excessive pride in one's appearance or qualities, with a craving for admiration.
Excessive pride in one's appearance or qualities, with a craving for admiration; separately, emptiness or futility.
Excessive pride oriented toward how one is regarded by others — appearance, qualities, achievements — and a craving for admiration. Per Austen, “vanity [relates] to what we would have others think of us,” and unlike pride it lacks any positive pole (“vanity is unlikely to be used” for warranted satisfaction). Differs from hubris (about admiration, not doom-courting overreach). Note the separate, older sense of emptiness/futility (“vanity of vanities”).
Inflated pride in oneself or one's appearance; craving for admiration.
This sense is attested from the mid-14c.
That which is vain, empty, or worthless — “vanity of vanities.”
The older, original sense (c. 1200), from Latin vanus “empty.”
c. 1200 “that which is vain or worthless,” from Latin vanitas “emptiness, falsity,” from vanus “empty, void.”
The “emptiness / futility” sense came first (c. 1200); the “conceit, desire for admiration” sense is later (mid-14c.). Bunyan's “Vanity Fair” (1678) and concrete senses (the dressing table, 1898) are later developments. No reliable recent-generation shift.