Other forms: vamps
A vamp is a woman who uses her charm to exploit men. A dangerous vamp, play the vamp, vamp him into it.
It is a silent-film word, shortened from vampire, and it belongs to a period that had very few ways of describing a woman with power. In music a vamp is a repeated figure played while waiting, and the vamp of a shoe is the part over the toes.
1nounvampA woman who uses her charm to exploit men.
“In the old black-and-white film, she played a vamp who ruined rich men.”
vamp is a character.
A shortening of vampire, from the film vamps of the 1910s. The shoe sense is an older and unrelated word.
Old French
avantpied
Anglo-Norman
vampe
Middle English
vaumpe
English, today
vamp
Built from
From Middle English vaumpe, vaum-pei, vampe (“covering for the foot, perhaps a slipper or understocking; upper of a boot or shoe”), or from Anglo-Norman vampe, vaumpé (“part of a stocking covering the top of the foot”), from Old French avantpied, avantpiet, variants of avantpié, from avant (“in front”) + pié (“foot”). Noun senses 2 and 3 (“a patch; something patched up or improvised”) appear to have been extended from sense 1 (“top part of a boot or shoe”). Sense 4 (“repeated and often improvised musical accompaniment”) was probably derived from sense 3, and sense 5 (“activity to fill or stall for time”) from sense 4. The verb senses were derived from the noun. Compare also Middle English vaum-peien (“(uncertain) to repair (footwear) with a new upper or vamp; to fabricate an upper or vamp”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA