n A part of anything taken or presented for inspection, or shown as evidence of the quality of the whole; a specimen; as, goods are often purchased by samples.
n (statistics) A subset of a population selected for measurement, observation or questionicommeng, to provide statistical information about the population.
n (cooking) a small piece of food for tasting, typically given away for free
n (business) a small piece of some goods, for determining quality, colour, etc., typically given away for free
n (music) Gratuitous borrowing of easily recognised phases (or moments) from other music (or movies) in a recording, used to emphasize a particular point by implying a certain context.