English

A vanitas painting by Harmen Steenwijck

Noun

vanitas ‎(plural vanitases)

1. (painting) A type of still life painting, symbolic of mortality, characteristic of Dutch painting of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
   • 2009 March 6, Holland Cotter, “Change and Permanence, Captured by Cameras”, in New York Times:

     In her straight-ahead photographs of storefronts, an arrangement of shoes or shrink-wrapped furniture becomes a vanitas still life.

See also

• vanitas on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Latin

Etymology

vanus +‎ -itas

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈwaː.ni.tas/, [ˈwaː.nɪ.tas]

Noun

vānitas f ‎(genitive vānitātis); third declension

1. emptiness, nothingness

   vanitas vanitatum‎ ― vanity of vanities

2. falsity, falsehood, deception, untruth, untrustworthiness, fickleness
3. vanity, vainglory

Inflection

Third declension.

Descendants

References

• vanitas in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• vanitas in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• VANITAS in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition, 1883–1887)
• Félix Gaffiot (1934), “vanitas”, in Dictionnaire Illustré Latin-Français, Paris: Hachette.