vainly

1. 1.

   to no avail

   “he looked for her in vain”

   “the city fathers tried vainly to find a solution”

   Synonymsin vain

Questions about vainly

What does vainly mean?

vainly means "to no avail".

How many syllables are in vainly?

vainly has 2 syllables: vain-ly. The stress falls on "vain". In IPA it is /ˈveɪnli/.

What is another word for vainly?

Close synonyms include in vain. 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 vainly a common word?

vainly 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.