Word.ws English Dictionary

samp

/samp/

samp noun: an article of food consisting of coarse ground maize, or a porridge made from it.

samp: an article of food consisting of coarse ground maize, or a porridge made from it
Image: Manuel Ebert, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

samp (countable and uncountable, plural samps)

  1. (US) An article of food consisting of coarse ground maize, or a porridge made from it.
    • I asked him to give me a little of his Broth, or Water they [Horses feet] were boiling in; he took a dish, and gave me one spoonful of Samp, and bid me take as much of the Broth as I would.1675, The Captivity of Mary Rowlandson, included in The Portable North American Indian Reader, New York: Penguin Books, 1977, page 341
    • The meal, coarse or fine, is then used for samps, mushes, or batters, and cakes, thick or thin, and of many varieties and degrees of wholesomeness.1882, The Atlantic Monthly, volume 50, page 549

Proper noun capitalized: Samp

Samp (plural Samps)

  1. A surname from Polish.

Noun (2) capitalized: sAMP

sAMP (uncountable)

  1. (abbreviation) Abbreviation of adenylosuccinic acid.

Examples of samp in a sentence

  • We remained in class until 12.45, and then had a lunch of samp, sour milk and beans, seldom meat.1994, Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, London: Abacus, published 2010, page 44:
  • Abigail taught her the use of the samp mortar.2004, Louise Cabral, A Pageant of Shadows, page 327:
  • In the area of cuisine, the Xhosa have contributed many corn recipes, most famously samp and beans (umngqusho).2005, Fran Osseo-Asare, Food Culture in Sub-Saharan Africa, page 74:

Forms of samp

Noun
pluralsamps
Proper noun
pluralSamps

Origin of samp

From Massachusett nasamp, nasaump (“softened with water”); compare suppawn.

Borrowed from Polish Samp. It could also be a hypocoristic form of the personal name Samson.

Questions about samp

What does samp mean?
Samp means an article of food consisting of coarse ground maize, or a porridge made from it.
How do you use samp in a sentence?
We remained in class until 12.45, and then had a lunch of samp, sour milk and beans, seldom meat.
What part of speech is samp?
Samp can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce samp?
Samp is pronounced /samp/ (UK).
What is the plural of samp?
The plural of samp is samps.

Words near samp in the dictionary

  1. Samoyedes
  2. Samoyedic
  3. Samoyedologist
  4. Samoyedologists
  5. samoyeds
  6. samp
  7. SAMPA
  8. Sampaga
  9. sampaguita
  10. Sampaio
  11. Sampaios

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: samp (page history and authors); Samp (page history and authors); sAMP (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-samp.wav.

Cite this entry: “samp.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/samp. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.