Word.ws English Dictionary

vainglory

Syllables: vain·glo·ryUK[veɪnˈɡlɔː.ɹi][ˈveɪnˌɡlɔɚ.i]

vainglory noun: excessive vanity.

Noun

vainglory (countable and uncountable, plural vainglories)

  1. Excessive vanity.
  2. Boastful, unwarranted pride in one's accomplishments or qualities.
    • Then he reasoned, as he had in the days past, that the course of human history had shown national pride—the inflexible kind—to be mankind’s worst enemy, and ordinary people paid the price in suffering. Nations had gone down because of vainglory, when moderation might have civilized and saved them.1962, Arthur Hailey, “Chapter Eleven: The White House”, in In High Places (fiction)
  3. Vain, ostentatious display.
    • The pew would soon want new flooring, Mr. Dangerfield thought, and the Castlemallard arms and supporters, a rather dingy piece of vainglory, overhanging the main seat on the wall, would be nothing the worse of a little fresh gilding and paint.1863, Sheridan Le Fanu, The House by the Churchyard
  4. A regarding of oneself with undue favor.

Verb

vainglory (third-person singular simple present vainglories, present participle vainglorying, simple past and past participle vaingloried)

  1. (intransitive) To boast; to act in a vain manner.

vainglory meaning in Urdu, Kannada and Tagalog

vainglory in Urdu

vainglory
اتراہٹ itrāhaṭ

vainglory in Kannada

ಹೊಗಳಿಕೊಳ್ಳುವಿಕೆ, ಒಣಹೆಮ್ಮೆ, ಹೊಳ್ಳುಕಾಣ್ಕೆ

vainglory in Tagalog

boastful, unwarranted pride
pamansa

Forms of vainglory

Noun
pluralvainglories
Verb
third-person singular presentvainglories
present participlevainglorying
past participlevaingloried
pastvaingloried

Origin of vainglory

From Middle English waynglori (“worthless glory”), from Old French vaine glorie, from Medieval Latin vāna glōria, from Latin vāna (“empty, groundless, boastful”) + glōria (“fame, ambition, boasting”), apparently modelled after similar terms in Germanic languages. Compare Old English īdel wuldor (“vain glory”) and īdelġielp (“vainglory”).

Words formed from vainglory

Questions about vainglory

What does vainglory mean?
Vainglory means excessive vanity.
What is vainglory in Urdu?
Vainglory in Urdu is اتراہٹ (itrāhaṭ). See Vainglory meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is vainglory?
Vainglory can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce vainglory?
Vainglory is pronounced [veɪnˈɡlɔː.ɹi] (UK).
What is the plural of vainglory?
The plural of vainglory is vainglories.

Words near vainglory in the dictionary

  1. vainglories
  2. vaingloriness
  3. vainglorious
  4. vaingloriously
  5. vaingloriousness
  6. vainglory
  7. vainglorying
  8. vaingloryings
  9. Vainikkala
  10. vainly
  11. vainness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: vainglory (page history and authors); اتراہٹ (Urdu) (page history and authors); vainglory (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-vainglory.ogg.

Cite this entry: “vainglory.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/vainglory. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.