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Vanity Fair

name

Etymology

From “Vanity Fair”, location of a debauched year-long festival in the 1678 novel The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan.

Definitions

  1. Society, especially high society, as a place of self-interest and the superficial.

    • And how will your conscience answer one day for carrying so many bonny lasses to barter modesty for conceit and levity at the metropolitan Vanity Fair?
    • Such a complete Vanity Fair as the Palais Royal, is not, I imagine, to be found any where else
    • Nash, the son of a glass-merchant — Brummell, the hopeful of a small shopkeeper — became the intimates of princes, dukes, and fashionables; were petty kings of Vanity Fair, and were honoured by their subjects.

The neighborhood

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sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA