"Vanity" is a very interesting vocabulary.
The first time I noticed this word was in a house renovation TV show (probably the Property Brothers). People in America love this kind of double vanities so much that they keep mentioning this word.
But when I looked up "洗手台" ( the Chinese word of vanity) on the internet, the results were "washbasin, sink, hand basin…" None of them were what I had heard on the TV program. And they are also not vanities!
Then I looked up the English word "vanity", and the Google Translator says it is "pride, arrogant and extravagant". None of them relate to the bathrooms! Finally I found a suitable explanation in the fifth description on the dictionary : a dressing table. It can refer to a dressing table without basins (but with a mirror) or one that settled in a bathroom like the picture.
The interesting thing is, the origin of the word is "vain", which means something with empty inside, can not be fulfilled, or with only appearance. For instance, "in vain" means fail to succeed in spite of one's effort. "A vain attempt" means a goal that can not be reached.
That's the deep meaning linked to a vanity in a bathroom to an English user ── it just helps you to chase the illusory semblance of something, not to, which happens to be the metaphor for a dressing mirror in Chinese, discover your true nature!
For example we use "明鏡"( a clear mirror) to describe something that helps us to see ourselves clearly or to have a clear understanding about the situation. And we can say "借鏡" (to borrow a mirror from someone else) to mean we learn some lessons from others' experiences. There're also sayings like "明鏡高懸" (mirrors hung above a room) to imply an officer with honest and a sense of justice. That's a very different metaphor compared to the English version.
Other usages about vanity are:
• vanity case: a small bag used by a woman for carrying make-up etc.
• vanity sizing: the practice of labeling clothes a size smaller than they really are, so that customers feel they are thinner than they really are.
• the vanity of something: the lack of importance of something compared to other things that are much more important.
All of them somehow have a meaning of fake, disguise or covering up.
All in all, it great to find some interesting characters in two different languages. And "vanity" is definitely a meaningful and useful vocabulary in English.
# Jill Yang
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