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-‘to be/become empty’reconstructed
  2. Proto-Italicc. 1500–700 BCE*wānosreconstructed
  3. Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEvānus‘vain, empty, vacant, void’
  4. Latin, derivedc. 75 BCE–200 CEvānitās‘emptiness, nothingness’
  5. Englishearliest quotation 2009vanitas

attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed

Lineage

  1. Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*h₁weh₂-‘to be/become empty’reconstructed
  2. Proto-Italicc. 1500–700 BCE*wānosreconstructed
  3. Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEvānus‘vain, empty, vacant, void’
  4. Latin, derivedc. 75 BCE–200 CEvānitās‘emptiness, nothingness’
  5. Englishearliest quotation 2009vanitas

Earliest quotation: 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.

Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.

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

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