vanta

The wind has nothing to do with it. Vant- and vento look like relatives and are not: vento is Latin ventus, the wind, and vanta is Latin vanus, empty. Two different words that happen to start with the same three letters, and no seam anywhere in either. It is worth saying out loud because the false connection is seductive - empty, airy, full of wind - and English idiom encourages it. Resist. One root each, no shared history.

Now the fence that actually costs marks, because English vain is two words in Esperanto. Vana is vain in the sense of futile: vanaj klopodoj, wasted effort, vane, in vain, to no purpose. Vanta is vain in the sense of conceited: the person who cannot pass a mirror. Both go back to Latin vanus in the end - vana straight from the adjective, vanta by way of vanitas and its Romance descendants - but Esperanto took them in as two separate roots and keeps them apart absolutely. Get them the wrong way round and vana homo says a useless person rather than a self-satisfied one.

The second sense of vanta bridges the two, which is where the confusion comes from. Beyond conceited, vanta describes what has no real substance: vanta gloro is hollow fame, vantaĵo a trifle or a bauble, and vanteco the quality itself. That sense sits close to vana and always has - vantaĵo de vantaĵoj is how Ecclesiastes reads in Esperanto. Against the neighbours: fiera is proud, and it is neutral or good in Esperanto as it is not always in English; arogana is arrogant; modesta and humila are the opposites.