Words similar to vain

Example sentences for: vain

How can you use “vain” in a sentence? Here are some example sentences to help you improve your vocabulary:

In your review of The New York Public Library Writers Guide to Style and Usage [XXI, 2], you mention looking in vain for wisdom regarding the use of the serial (or series, as I've always called it) comma.
One looks in vain in Gore's book for even a mention of the fundamentals of standard environmental economics: pollution as the prime example of an "externality" (a social cost that the market does not properly value), and the standard recommendation that externalities be corrected with pollution taxes or tradable emission permits.
Or you can just be a vain goofball.
Rather than compromise, the king fled Paris in a vain effort to join up with armed forces hostile to the Revolution.
The reader will look in vain for comparisons to results from prior years, but as the stories explain, the tests given this year are the first of their kind and so cannot be meaningfully compared to previous writing scores.