The WORD stigma, a moral slur, is one which has its roots in Greek criminal jurisprudence. The Greek word which gave the Latin stigma was the verb stizein, which meant to mark, the recipient being a criminal who was tattooed with a red-hot iron, both as a punishment and as a means of identification. Runaway slaves were frequent victims.
There was no sense of ignominy in the word's formation, however. Had there been, it would not have been used to denote the marks of Christ's wounds which are said to have appeared on the feet, hands, and sides of people much holier than me, most notably St Francis. Agnes Ryan of Limerick asked about the word.
Bernadette Madden of Shepherd's Bush in London wrote to tell me that the verb vamp, in the sense of to vamp an accompaniment on the piano, seems to be in decline. She recently asked a group of young musicians if they had anybody to vamp for them, and got blank stares in return.
This verb came into English from the Old French avanpie, itself from avant, before and pie, a foot, from Latin pes.
Avanpie was the front, or foot part of a stocking; it was introduced into English as vampey, later shortened to vamp. The verb originally meant to fit with a new vamp, to patch up, in other words. Hence by way of metaphor it came to mean to improvise in a simple, crude way, if ceili band vampers will forgive me.
The other vamp, an unscrupulous flirt, an adventuress, is merely a shortening of vampire, a word of Slav origin. Serbian has vampir.
My recent statement that the Irish-English snog, a slug, is the Irish snag (same pronunciation) is right as far is it goes, but it does not go far enough to satisfy a young relative of mine, who points out that the Irish is a borrowing from English. Snag, a snail, is common from Leicestershire down as far as England's south coast; in east Kent a snag is a slug and a snail is a shell snag.
Seilmide puca, I suppose, seilmide being a snail with a shell. Ayenbite of Inwyt (1340) has snegge.
From Old High German sneggo, all these snags and snogs.