swatch

American  

[swoch] / swɒtʃ /

noun

• swatches
  plural

1. a sample of cloth or other material.

2. a sample, patch, or characteristic specimen of anything.

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swatch British  

/ swɒtʃ /

noun

1. a sample of cloth

2. a number of such samples, usually fastened together in book form

3. printing

   1. a small sample of colour supplied to the printer for matching during printing

   2. a sample of ink spread on paper by a printer to check the accuracy of a required colour

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• swatches
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of swatch

First recorded in 1505–15; akin to switch

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Explanation

A swatch is a small piece of fabric that's used as a sample. If you're considering buying a purple velvet couch, you can order a swatch to see if it's really going to match your living room rug. A swatch is useful because it gives you an idea of what something larger—like curtains, a dress, or an upholstered piece of furniture—will look like. Sometimes swatch is also used for samples of other things, like paint colors or makeup. Swatch comes from 16th-century Scots, in which it was used to mean "a tally fixed to a piece of cloth before dyeing."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

swatch swatches

And what about the anxiety that AI is generating among a broad swatch of workers—and among parents worried about their children’s futures?

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 31, 2026

Marshall recently screened a broad swatch of equities and found 25 stocks that have preannounced at least five times in January since 2011.

From Barron's ● Dec. 31, 2025

The prestige TV age is the product of creators willing to play with the rules of physics in unexpected ways, thanks to the man who made a broader swatch of the small screen seductively Lynchian.

From Salon ● Jan. 18, 2025

Middleton was able to fill in several of the squares that surrounded the space where the No. 44 card’s swatch would go.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 14, 2024

Dark blue pony beads hung down a swatch of fringe, and Fishtail touched them carefully and lovingly as he stepped quietly along.

From "The Birchbark House" by Louise Erdrich

And yes, a fourth-season subplot finds the first gentleman hightailing to London to find some purpose beyond perusing wallpaper swatches.

From Salon ● Oct. 22, 2026

During papal assignments, he submits possible designs and fabric swatches to the Vatican office that organises masses and other papal celebrations, the Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff.

From Barron's ● Aug. 22, 2026

Vazquez made frequent trips to the Garment District with his classmates, where they traded swatches and helped each other find the best materials, often calling their instructors from inside fabric stores for guidance.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 11, 2026

There is only one highway into Enga Province and Care Australia said debris had fallen across large swatches of the road, limiting access to the rescue site.

From BBC ● May 26, 2024

He pulled back what I understood then to be drapes, and swatches of sky diluted the dark with soft moonlight.

From "The Marrow Thieves" by Cherie Dimaline

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