Chrysti The Wordsmith: Vamp - 1

5 herbivores this is Christie the wordsmith. Consider the many duties of the word vamp a vamp is a part of a shoe covering the four foot vamp is also the moniker of offense a tall and alluring woman with seductive charms. A musician can vamp while playing a song that is improvise on a musical theme between verses adding the prefix re to this word produces revamp a verb meaning to renovate or reconstruct. Do all these meanings have a common etymological ancestor. Well let's look at the first and oldest definition of the word which is a part of a shoe covering the four foot. This sense of the term vamp is found in an English document dated 12 25. It's the angler says ation of a French word of NPA meaning before the foot. In reference to the material covering the fore foot of a shoe. Four centuries later in the early sixteen hundreds the English noun was a verb a fied to vamp came to mean to stitch a new vamp on an old shoe. And later to mend or restore any

article of clothing with patches. The verb revamp arrived in the early 1900s to give us the meaning of restore overhaul or renew whether the item be an old shoe or an abandoned building. Next time more biographies of the various vamps. This is Christy the wordsmith. This series is produced and recorded in the studios of KGO AM on the campus of Montana State University in Bozeman. CHRISTIE The wordsmith is sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises a high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry. Zoot web dot com.