Other forms: samples, sampling, sampled
In research, a sample is the smaller group actually studied, standing in for a much larger one. A random sample, a sample of a thousand, sample size.
How the sample is chosen decides whether the findings mean anything: a random sample gives everybody an equal chance of selection, and a biased sample does not. Sample size is why small studies deserve caution. Elsewhere, a sample is a small free portion — a free sample, a sample of the fabric — and in music, to sample is to take a piece of an existing recording and build a new track on it.
1nounsampleThe smaller group actually studied, standing for the whole.
“The sample was too small to say anything useful.”
2noungivenA small amount given to show what something is like.
“They were handing out free samples at the door.”
3verbtryTo try a small amount of something.
“She sampled everything on the table and finished nothing.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
sample is a part standing for the whole.
Old French essample is the same word as example, from Latin exemplum — a thing taken out to show what the rest are like. Sample and example are one word split in two, and the statistical sense is the oldest meaning taken seriously.
Middle English
saumple
English, today
sample
From Middle English saumple. Middle English saumple, sample, from Old French essample (“example”), from Latin exemplum. a doublet of example and exemplum.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA