in vain

1. 1.

   to no avail

   “he looked for her in vain”

   “the city fathers tried vainly to find a solution”

   Synonymsvainly

Questions about in vain

What does in vain mean?

in vain means "to no avail".

What is another word for in vain?

Close synonyms include vainly. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is in vain a common word?

in vain is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.