Word.ws English Dictionary

vanitas

/ˈvæn.ɪˌtɑs/

vanitas noun: a type of still life painting, symbolic of mortality, characteristic of Dutch painting of the 16th and 17th centuries.

vanitas: a type of still life painting, symbolic of mortality, characteristic of Dutch painting of the 16th...
Image: Harmen Steenwijck, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

vanitas (plural vanitases)

  1. (painting) A type of still life painting, symbolic of mortality, characteristic of Dutch painting of the 16th and 17th centuries.
    • In her straight-ahead photographs of storefronts, an arrangement of shoes or shrink-wrapped furniture becomes a vanitas still life.2009 March 6, Holland Cotter, “Change and Permanence, Captured by Cameras”, in New York Times

Forms of vanitas

pluralvanitases

Origin of vanitas

From Latin vānitās. Doublet of vanity.

Questions about vanitas

What does vanitas mean?
Vanitas means a type of still life painting, symbolic of mortality, characteristic of Dutch painting of the 16th and 17th centuries.
What part of speech is vanitas?
Vanitas is a noun.
How do you pronounce vanitas?
Vanitas is pronounced /ˈvæn.ɪˌtɑs/.
What is the plural of vanitas?
The plural of vanitas is vanitases.

Words near vanitas in the dictionary

  1. vanishments
  2. vanisht
  3. Vanist
  4. Vanists
  5. Vanita
  6. vanitas
  7. vanitases
  8. vanities
  9. vanitiolide
  10. vanitize
  11. vanitized

Source and license

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