sample
verbEtymology Inherited from Middle English saumple, sample, from Old French essample (“example”), from Latin exemplum. Doublet of example and exemplum.
1
To take or to test a sample or samples of.
- They had just finished their breakfast, and the sight of the remains of it almost overpowered me. I could hardly keep my wits together in the presence of that food, but as I was not asked to sample it, I had to bear my trouble as best I could.1893, Mark Twain, “The £1,000,000 Bank-Note”, in The £1,000,000 Bank-Note and Other Stories, pages 2–3:
- Mok was enjoying himself very much. It was not often that he had such an opportunity to sample the delights of Paris. His young master, Ralph, had given him strict orders never to go out at night, or in his leisure hours, unless accompanied by Cheditafa.1895, Frank Richard Stockton, “Mok as a Vocalist”, in The Adventures of Captain Horn, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, published 1907, page 367:
4 more examples
- It is certainly my personal favourite, for it was by way of Hardwick's great Doric arch that I first sampled the roar and clatter of London streets, the trip being a boyhood reward for achieving (unexpected) success in a school examination!1951 October, R. S. McNaught, “Lines of Approach”, in Railway Magazine, page 703:
- I did not really wonder, after sampling the "Settebello's" standards of comfort and service, that even on a midweek day in autumn there was not a seat to spare, despite the cost.1960 March, G. Freeman Allen, “Europe's most luxurious express - the "Settebello"”, in Trains Illustrated, page 140:
- The Eyedropper tool allows you to sample colors from anywhere in your open InDesign documents (yes, even from placed images!) You can add a sampled color to the Swatches palette and then apply it to the fill or stroke of any frame, shape, path, line, or table.2005, Ted LoCascio, InDesign CS2 at Your Fingertips, →ISBN, page 46:
- The Healing brush is similar to the Clone Stamp in that information is sampled by Alt-clicking and then painted into other parts of the image. The big difference is that the Healing brush attempts to make the sampled data match the lighting and shading of the area to which it's being applied.2008, Mark Fitzgerald, Photoshop CS3 Restoration and Retouching Bible, →ISBN, page 148:
2
Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences, Signal processing To reduce a continuous signal (such as a sound wave) to a discrete signal.
3
Entertainment, Lifestyle, Music To reuse a portion of (an existing sound recording) in a new piece of music.
- To address this novel legal quandary, one legal treatise on copyright has developed the concept of fragmented literal similarity, a method of determining whether a sample-based work is substantially similar to the source it sampled. The name reflects the exactness of the similarity between the snippet of a track that is sampled and the sampled copy of that snippet.2011, Kembrew McLeod, Peter DiCola, Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling, →ISBN, page 130:
4
Computer graphics, Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences To make or show something similar to a sample.
- It means that a larger image field can be sampled from a lower resolution copy without much loss in comparative data, only the number of data points to be manipulated.2006, Translation of Digital Process to Architectural Program, →ISBN, page 6:
- Derived terms
- autosample, biosample, downsample, multisample, nonsampled, oversample, resample, samplable, sampler, serosample, undersample, undersampled, unsampled, upsample