adverb
definition
In a vain pursuit; to no avail; She searched vainly for her reflection in the shattered mirror.
definition
With a vain attitude; in a self-approving manner; She stared vainly at her reflection in the mirror.
Examples of vainly in a Sentence
He examined his hand carefully, vainly trying to find blood on it.
I tried vainly to put them together.
Arsenius went so far as to excommunicate the emperor, who, having vainly sought for pardon, took refuge in false accusations against Arsenius and caused him to be banished to Proconnesus, where some years afterwards (according to Fabricius in 1264; others say in 127 3) he died.
Hamilton (Discussions, p. 197) allows greater sagacity to Collier than to Berkeley, on the ground that he did not vainly attempt to enlist men's natural belief against the hypothetical realism of the philosophers.
This success turned the tide of war against Don Carlos, who vainly attempted a raid towards Madrid.
Dean sped up to 80 miles an hour and turned across three lanes to an exit while the Ford tried vainly, but unsuccessfully, to follow.
In return for this aid the younger Henry granted to William the earldom of Northumberland, a possession which the latter had vainly sought from the English king, and which was possibly the cause of their first estrangement.
Parma revolted from him, and he spent months in 1247-1248 vainly trying to reduce this one time faithful city.
Baratieri vainly attempted to push forward the reserve, but the Italians were already overwhelmed, and the battleor rather, series of distinct engagementsended in a general rout.
He led the Turkish cavalry at the battle of Slankamen, and in fact served valiantly but vainly against Austria during the remainder of the war, especially distinguishing himself at Zenta.
He as vainly sought to secure Luther's adoption of a strict rule of church discipline, after the manner of the Moravian Brethren.
He was scourged and only escaped with his life at the intercession of Onias the high priest, who had pleaded with him vainly that the treasure included the deposits of widows and orphans and also some belonging to Hyrcanus, " a man in very high position."
Shortly before starting for the Russian expedition Napoleon vainly tried to reassure the merchants and financiers of France then face to face with a sharp financial crisis.
He now hoped to accomplish what his grandfather, fifty years before, had vainly attempted - the destruction of the Danish-Norwegian monarchy by capturing its capital.
He accompanied Servetus to the stake, vainly urging him to a recantation at the last moment.
The so-called Spectre Huntsman of the Malay Peninsula is said to be a man who scours the firmament with his dogs, vainly seeking for what he could not find on earth - a buck mouse-deer pregnant with male offspring; but he seems to be a living man; there is no statement that he ever died, nor yet that he is a spirit.
He attempted, though vainly, to use his influence to moderate Napoleon's policy, especially in the matter of Spain and the treatment of the pope.
It illustrates Marino Sanuto's Secreta fidelium crucis, in which its author vainly appeals to Christendom to undertake another crusade.
The Cuban policy of Presidents Pierce and Buchanan (during 1853-1861) was vainly directed to acquiring the island.
His adversaries vainly endeavoured to gain him by favour, for as court-marshal and senator he was still more hostile to the dominant patricians who followed the adventurous policy of Magnus de la Gardie.
In the latter case the United States, after the purchase of Alaska, vainly attempted to assert dominion beyond the three-mile limit.
His obvious desire to preserve law and order excited the hostility of John of Giscala, who endeavoured vainly to remove him as a traitor to the national cause by inciting the Galileans to kill him and by persuading the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem to recall him.
In the following year the Peguans vainly endeavoured to throw off the yoke.
Egypt had already recovered its independence (660 B.C.) with the help of mercenaries sent by Gyges of Lydia, who had vainly solicited aid from Assyria against his Cimmerian enemies.
For more than ten years he remained at Copenhagen, looking vainly towards Russia as a sort of promised land from which he was excluded by enemies or rivals.
From this time onward his chief aim was the realization of the navy scheme which he had vainly submitted to the Constituent Assembly.
It was a labor of loving service, untouched by the spirit of material gain, conferring upon the work of the older masters a dignity and poetic feeling which we vainly seek in much of the later work.
But on the other side the disorder became greater and greater, many regiments were used up, and Johnston himself killed in vainly attacking on a point of Wallace's line called the Hornet's Nest.
Turenne then laid waste the Palatinate, in order that it should no longer support an army, and fell back over the Rhine, ignoring the reproaches of the elector palatine, who vainly challenged him to a duel.
The title, however, was an empty one, the throne of Castile being actually in the possession of Henry of Trastamara, whom the English had vainly endeavoured to set aside.
The old marshal vainly endeavoured to keep his own, Progressists within bounds in the Cortes of 1854-1856, and in the great towns, but their excessive demands for reforms and liberties played into the hands of a clerical and reactionary court and of the equally retrograde governing classes.
The inhabitants are the descendants of the Moors, who, after the Spanish conquest of Granada in 1492, vainly sought to preserve the last relics of their independence in their mountain fastnesses.
He was made one of Charles's chaplains, and vainly tried to secure the legal ratification of Charles's declaration of the 25th of October 1660.
In 1511 he passed over to Cuba to take part in the work of "population and pacification," and in 1513 or 1514 he witnessed and vainly endeavoured to check the massacre of Indians at Caonao.
In 1052 he joined the emperor at Pressburg, and vainly sought to secure the submission of the Hungarians; and at Regensburg, Bamberg and Worms the papal presence was marked by various ecclesiastical solemnities.
The latter, a zealous Roman Catholic, had vainly tried to stem the tide of the Reformation in his dominions; Henry, on the other hand, was an equally devoted Protestant.
On hearing that the sentence was commuted to life-long imprisonment, he declared that the pardon was harder than the punishment, and vainly petitioned for leave to serve his king for the rest of his life as a common soldier.
Jerome vainly sought to bend his brother's will in an interview at Alexandria.
What the Teutonic Order had Teutonic vainly endeavoured to bring about by fire and sword, Order.
He proposed to provoke the Tatars to a rupture by repudiating the humiliating tribute with which the Republic had so long and so vainly endeavoured to buy off their incessant raids.
Here Churchyard enriched himself at the expense, it is to be feared, of the unhappy Irish; but in 1552 he was in England again, trying vainly to secure a fortune by marriage with a rich widow.
Shortly afterwards (1892) he succeeded in finally beating down the resistance of the Hazara tribe, who vainly attempted to defend their immemorial independence, within their highlands, of the central authority at Kabul.
McClellan, deprived of McDowell's corps, felt himself reduced to impotence, and three Federal armies were vainly marching up and down the Valley when Johnston fell with all his forces upon the Army of the Potomac. The Federals lay on both sides of the Chickahominy river, and at this moment Johnston heard that McDowell's arrival need not be feared.
The French were in possession of the place in 1797 and again in 1805; and in 1809 Marshal Macdonald having, in accordance with the terms of the peace of Vienna, entered the citadel which he had vainly besieged, blew it all up with the exception of the belltower and the citizens' or clock tower.
For a short time it became the capital of a self-governing federation of the Hephtanesos (" Seven Islands "); in 1807 its faction-ridden government was again replaced by a French administration, and in 1809 it was vainly besieged by a British fleet.
Napoleon, however, could not forget that as a young man he himself had vainly fought to obtain from Gregory XVI.
While holding this office he was selected to officiate as preacher when the friar, John Forest, whom he vainly endeavoured to move to submission, was burned at the stake for denying the royal supremacy.
For the next four years he led a vagabond life, but in 1698, after vainly petitioning the new king, Charles XII., for pardon, he entered the service of Augustus the Strong of Saxony and Poland, with the deliberate intention of wresting from Sweden Livonia, to which he had now no hope of returning so long as that province belonged to the Swedish Crown.
After vainly invoking the aid of the emperor Frederick I., the young king came to terms with Louis (1160), whose daughter was betrothed to Henry's namesake and heir.
Still, although clamouring vainly for the exemption of the electorate from the area covered by the edict, John George took no decided measures to break his alliance with the emperor.