To Do Something in Vain

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Meaning:

To Do Something in Vain means Without success; futile, hopelessly

“Well, I just did that in vain”

Origin:

The phrase has been used since the 1300s. There are examples of the phrase being used in the Bible. The original phrase was translated from the Latin “in vanum” meaning to no effect. In these cases, the word vanum or vain meant empty. When the word “in” is added to the front it means that something takes on an empty or negative purpose.

Example:

Today we still use the phrase to do something in vain to express that the effort we just put into a task will not pay off, it was useless. An example sentence is:

“All of my studying was in vain. The professor asked questions that weren’t even in the material.”

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