Word of the Day for Sunday, July 8, 2012

vamp \vamp\, verb:
1. To patch up; repair.
2. To give (something) a new appearance by adding a patch or piece.
3. To concoct or invent (often followed by up): He vamped up a few ugly rumors to discredit his enemies.
4. To furnish with a vamp, especially to repair (a shoe or boot) with a new vamp.
noun:
1. The portion of a shoe or boot upper that covers the instep and toes.
2. Something patched up or pieced together.

...plod and plow, vamp your old coats and hats, weave a shoestring; great affairs and the best wine by and by.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Illusions," Essays and Poems
To lay false claim to an invention or discovery which has an immediate market value; to vamp up a professedly new book of reference by stealing from the pages of one already produced at the cost of much labour and material…
-- George Eliot, "Impressions of Theophrastus Such"

Vamp is a shortening of the Middle French word avant-pie literally meaning "fore-foot." This sense of the word is embedded in the more common word revamp.

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