Sample

Research

The subset of a population actually studied; the selection method determines how far results can generalize.

Sources

1. Merriam-Webster — sample merriam-webster.com accessed 23 September 2026

Merriam-Webster’s statistical sense is exact: “a finite part of a statistical population whose properties are studied to gain information about the whole”, alongside the general “a representative part or a single item from a larger whole”. From Latin exemplum through Anglo-French; first recorded in the fifteenth century. Two words in that definition do the work — finite, and to gain information about the whole. A sample that is not intended to support inference about a population is just a set of cases.

Merriam-Webster is cited as the dictionary of record: where an entry defines a word rather than a position, a dictionary is the primary source for it. The research usage above is this lexicon’s own.

Related terms

• Abbreviation
• Abstract
• Abstraction
• Academic Database
• Analysis
• Annotation

From the AJG lexicon archive (July 2026).