noun

1. a part, piece, or item taken or shown as representative of a whole thing, group, species, etc.; specimen; pattern samples of wallpaper
2. an illustration; example a sample of his humor
3. a small amount of sound, music, etc. taken from one context, digitized and recorded, edited, and used again in another context
4. ☆ Statistics a selected segment of a population studied to gain knowledge of the whole

Etymology: ME, aphetic for asample < Anglo-Fr, for OFr essample: see example

transitive verb sampled -·pled, sampling -·pling

1. to take a sample or samples of, as for testing quality
2. to digitize and record (small amounts of sound, music, etc.) for editing and using again in another context