Vanity is excessive pride in your appearance or abilities, the kind of self-admiration that makes you care more about looking good than being good. Someone with vanity spends hours staring in the mirror, fishing for compliments, or talking endlessly about their accomplishments. Vanity means being so focused on yourself that you forget about everyone else, going beyond healthy pride in real achievements to constant self-absorption.

A vain person might obsess over having the trendiest clothes or the perfect hair, but these things don't make someone a better friend, student, or person. When you're vain, you're investing everything in a surface that won't last.

You might encounter vanity in the phrase vanity project, describing something someone creates mainly to show off rather than to serve a real purpose. In older books, you'll find vanity used to mean futility or meaninglessness, as in “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity” from the Bible, suggesting that many things people chase after are ultimately empty.

A vanity is also a bathroom cabinet with a sink and mirror, named for the bedroom furniture piece where people once sat to admire themselves while grooming. That history hints at the word's long association with self-regard.