sample
noun · verb
Simple meaning
A small part of something intended as representative of the whole.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
sampuhlSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈsæmpəl
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
A small part of something intended as representative of the whole
A part or snippet of something taken or presented for inspection, or shown as evidence of the quality of the whole; a specimen.
cooking
A small quantity of food for tasting, typically given away for free.
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.
verb
transitive
To take or to test a sample or samples of.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner (estimated)
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Varies by meaning
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A small part of something intended as representative of the whole
Used this way, sample is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It stays understated rather than dramatic. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Mild
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use sample
- “Could I please have a small sample of that new dessert?”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
The selection of a suitable sample for study.
An observation station that is set up to make sample observations of something.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Items selected at random from a population and used to test hypotheses about the population.
The frequency of sampling a continuously varying signal.
The frequency of sampling per unit time.
An observation station that is set up to make sample observations of something.
A sample in which every element in the population has an equal chance of being selected.
The population is divided into strata and a random sample is taken from each stratum.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.