sample

noun

A part or snippet of something taken or presented for inspection, or shown as evidence of the quality of the whole; a specimen.

(statistics) A subset or portion of a population that is systematically selected for measurement, observation, or questioning, with the objective of generating statistical information that accurately reflects the characteristics of the entire population.

(cooking) A small quantity of food for tasting, typically given away for free.

(business) A small piece of some goods, for determining quality, colour, etc., typically given away for free.

(music) A borrowing of easily recognised phases (or moments) from other music (or movies) in a recording.

A surname.

(emergency medicine) Initialism of signs and symptoms, allergies, medications, past pertinent history, last oral intake, events leading to present illness.

(obsolete) Example; pattern.

verb

(transitive) To take or to test a sample or samples of.

(transitive, signal processing) To reduce a continuous signal (such as a sound wave) to a discrete signal.

(music, transitive) To reuse a portion of (an existing sound recording) in a new piece of music.

(transitive, computer graphics) To make or show something similar to a sample.

Roots

exemplumsampl- · Latin · example, sample

Synonyms for sample

specimenn samplern testn tasten assayn tastern swatchn tryv experimentn surveyn questionnairen examplen

Synonyms & related words for sample

Find synonyms, related words, and the definition of sample — including specimen, sampler, test, taste, assay, taster. Dendril is a free visual thesaurus that shows them on an interactive map where stronger matches sit closer to the center — no signup, no ads.

Words related to sample

Explore words related to sample — words associated with it, words that go with it, and its nearest matches in meaning. Related words include subsample, resample, degust, diluter, oversampling, pretest, cupel, uranalysis. Click any word to make it the center of the map and keep exploring the web of connections.

Synonyms for sample

Common synonyms for sample include specimen, sampler, test, taste, assay, taster, swatch, try — words that share a close meaning. Hover or tap any word on the map for its definition and part of speech.

Where does sample come from?

The word sample breaks down into one root of Latin origin: the root sampl-, from Latin exemplum (“example, sample”). Explore each root to see other English words built from the same source.