swatch
Americannoun
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a sample of cloth or other material.
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a sample, patch, or characteristic specimen of anything.
noun
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a sample of cloth
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a number of such samples, usually fastened together in book form
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printing
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a small sample of colour supplied to the printer for matching during printing
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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
Etymology
Origin of swatch
First recorded in 1505–15; akin to switch
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
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Grooms have shown Boston-based wedding planner Keri Ketterer Walter a specific tartan, a herringbone fabric swatch and “wallpaper that kind of looked like the scales of a trout” for decor inspiration, she said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 19, 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
The account published an Instagram story that asked for more information about No. 44, and posted two purported versions of it: one with the multicolor swatch, one with the plain white swatch, Steven said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 14, 2024
My ponytail was absolutely childish, so I tried an upsweep, a swatch over the eye like Gloria Swanson, and a pouf like Elizabeth Taylor.
From "Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High" by Melba Pattillo Beals
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
The user sent Steven two images of card No. 44 — with different jersey swatches.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 14, 2024
Suppose two speakers of the same language are playing a guessing game where each has the same color swatches, and Player 1 tries to get Player 2 to guess a hue by naming the color.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 1, 2024
She tests her concoctions directly on the walls of the studio, and one such surface resembles a grand quilt, blanketed with bleeding swatches of mustard, maroon and, of course, blue.
From New York Times ● Feb. 29, 2024
She has swatches of colors and samples of flowers.
From "Blended" by Sharon M. Draper
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
