vanitas
/ˈvæn.ɪˌtɑs/noun
vanitas is a noun meaning “A type of still life painting, symbolic of mortality, characteristic of Dutch painting of the 16th and 17th centuries” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled V-A-N-I-T-A-S, and it appears about once in every 13 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of vanitas is vanitases.
What does vanitas mean?
noun
- 1
A type of still life painting, symbolic of mortality, characteristic of Dutch painting of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce vanitas?
- /ˈvæn.ɪˌtɑs/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of vanitas
- vanitases plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is vanitas?
Vanitas appears about once in every 13 million words in written English, the 106,501st most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does vanitas come from?
From Latin vānitās. Doublet of vanity.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).