Meaning

noun a small part of something intended as representative of the whole

noun items selected at random from a population and used to test hypotheses about the population

noun all or part of a natural object that is collected and preserved as an example of its class

originInherited from Middle English saumple, sample, from Old French essample (“example”), from Latin exemplum. Doublet of example and exemplum.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0