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.
(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.