Vamping

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Creating improvised musical backing parts ; behaving in a playful, suggestive manner to gain interest ; occupying time by stalling or diverting attention
2. Making up spontaneous music accompaniment often on piano ; using flirtatious behavior to charm or entice ; avoiding immediate action by wasting time or distracting
3. Producing on-the-spot musical phrases to support a performance ; engaging in coquettish conduct to catch someone's eye ; deliberately postponing something through unnecessary delays

Etymology: The verb "vamping" grows from a shoe part, not from a seductress or a jazz pianist. The noun "vamp" once named the upper part of a boot or shoe, from Old French "avantpied," literally "in front" plus "foot." Medieval English speakers used it for a covering for the top of the foot, perhaps a slipper or an understocking. Cobblers who repaired footwear by fitting a new upper were said to vamp a shoe, and that repair sense gave rise to the idea of patching something up or improvising. From that patch-up sense came the musical meaning. A "vamp" became a repeated, often improvised accompaniment, a figure a player could loop while waiting for a singer or a cue. Stretching such a passage to fill time gave the sense of deliberately stalling, and the coquettish sense comes from the separate, later word "vampire," clipped to "vamp" for the seductive femme fatale of silent film, made famous by Theda Bara's role in the 1915 film "A Fool There Was."

Synonyms: improvising, faking, fiddling