: the part of a shoe upper or boot upper covering especially the forepart of the foot and sometimes also extending forward over the toe or backward to the back seam of the upper
2
[derivative of vamp entry 4]: a short introductory musical passage often repeated several times (as in vaudeville) before a solo or between verses
Middle English vampe, vaumpe "covering for the foot, upper of a shoe," borrowed from Anglo-French, probably truncated from *vampé, reduced form of avanpié, from avant- "fore-" + pié "foot," going back to Latin ped-, pēs — more at vanguard, foot entry 1