Etymograph

English

vanitas

Vanitas comes from Latin vānitās ‘emptiness, nothingness’, from vānus ‘vain, empty, vacant, void’, and ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁weh₂-.

  1. Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*h₁weh₂-1‘to be/become empty’reconstructed
  2. Proto-Italicc. 1500–700 BCE*wānos1reconstructed
  3. Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEvānus1‘vain, empty, vacant, void’
  4. Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEvānitās2‘emptiness, nothingness’
  5. Englishearliest quotation 2009vanitas2

attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor

  1. 1 Wiktionary, Latin vanitas
  2. 2 Wiktionary, English vanitas
  3. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 2009, Holland Cotter, Change and Permanence, Captured by Cameras: “In her straight-ahead photographs of storefronts, an arrangement of…”.

Lineage

  1. Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*h₁weh₂-Wiktionary, Latin vanitas‘to be/become empty’reconstructed
  2. Proto-Italicc. 1500–700 BCE*wānosWiktionary, Latin vanitasreconstructed
  3. Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEvānusWiktionary, Latin vanitas‘vain, empty, vacant, void’
  4. Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEvānitāsWiktionary, English vanitas‘emptiness, nothingness’
  5. Englishearliest quotation 2009vanitasWiktionary, English vanitas. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 2009, Holland Cotter, Change and Permanence, Captured by Cameras: “In her straight-ahead photographs of storefronts, an arrangement of…”

Linked words

through Proto-Indo-European *h₁weh₂- ‘to be/become empty’

want, various, waste, variety, vacation, void, vary, vast, variable, vacant, evacuate, vacate, waning, wane, vacuous, varicella, 26 more

through Latin vānus ‘vain, empty, vacant, void’

vain, vanish, evanescent, 7 more

Today it means

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

Sources

Sources: Wiktionary, “vanitas”; the older steps come from the Wiktionary entry for Latin vanitas. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.

Etymograph / Proto-Indo-European *h₁weh₂- / vanitas

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