Vain.

a1832 Encycl. Metrop. (1845) XX. 18/1 The Country near Cape Mount was anciently inhabited by the Vaï, or Faï, and Pwi Tribes.

a1832 Encycl. Metrop. (1845) XX. 18/2 The Vaï, or Veï, were not reduced without difficulty.

1849 S. W. Koelle (title) Narrative of an expedition into the Vy country of West Africa.

1849 S. W. Koelle Narr. Expedition into Vy Country of W. Afr. 9 The Vei language is very simple, harmonious, with scarcely any grammatical inflexions, rich in vowels.

1854 S. W. Koelle Outl. Gram. Vei Lang. p. iv If we compare the dialects spoken by the Manis and the Veis, we discover a difference which can scarcely have arisen in less than a couple of centuries.

1923 A. L. Kroeber Anthropol. ix. 225 All the values of his signs were syllabic. The same holds of the West African Vei writing invented in the nineteenth century by a native. He..fell back on syllabic signs even though this necessitated two hundred different characters.

1932 W. L. Graff Lang. & Langs. xi. 434 Of some 435 Sudanese languages..only five or six are written. These are Vai, of the Nigero-Senegalese group,..[etc.].

1936 G. Greene Journey without Maps ii. i. 99 Mr. Reeves was a Vai, a Mahommedan.

1949 L. D. Turner Africanisms in Gullah Dial. i. 14 The Vai word for ‘fat’ is..lit. ‘mouth full’.

1957 M. Banton West Afr. City vii. 127 Vai territory in Sierra Leone amounts only to some twenty-five square miles on the coastline next to the Liberian frontier. There are hardly any Vai in the colony.

1965 Sierra Leone Lang. Rev. (Afr. Lang. Rev.) IV. 81 The derivations listed for these 85 terms are prima facie astonishing, for 63 are Mende and 21 are Vai.

1974 J. R. Baker Race xxi. 411 The Mende tribe (a subdivision, like the Vai, of the Mandingo group of tribes).

1979 Africa XLIX. 92 The Vai script is so famous that it is surprising to realize that the language is spoken by, at most, 40,000 people.

1983 Word 34 136 Reading and writing Vai script was associated with certain specific skills.