[f. VAMP v.1]
1. The action of the vb., in lit. and fig. senses.
1599. Minsheu, Sp. Dict., Cabeçado,… the vamping or putting to the instops to bootes.
1680. Vind. Conforming Clergy (ed. 2), 50. It had certainly been a far more honest … Employment for him to have … hired a Stall, and set himself bodily to Vamping of Boots.
1706. Phillips (ed. Kersey), s.v. Vamps, To graft a new Footing on old Stockings is still call’d Vamping.
1773. Foote, Bankrupt, III. Political papers should bear vamping; like sermons, change but the application and text, and they will suit all persons and seasons.
1819. Jeffrey, in Cockburn, Life (1852). II. 187. I have just got done with another Review…. I have more vamping and patching than writing.
1850. Carlyle, Latter-d. Pamph., vii. (1872), 233. The mere vamping-together of hostile veracities.
1860. All Year Round, No. 72. 508. No vamping of him up into a severe ancient Roman will do.
b. attrib. (in sense 3 of the vb.).
c. 1890. (title) Reeves’ Vamping Tutor.—The Art of Extemporaneous Accompaniment or playing by ear on the Piano.
1905. Church Times, 30 June, 842/4. Those strange, long, keyless trumpets, called vamping-horns.
1908. F. Bond, Screens & Galleries, 147. One of the strangest instruments of the old choirs is the vamping trumpet.
2. Tramping, trudging. rare.
1661. K. W., Conf. Charac. (1860), 46. His quick motion and speedy vamping from place to place … makes him smell like a traveller.
