swatch

noun

1. A piece, pattern, or sample, generally of cloth or a similar material.

   “He held a swatch of the wallpaper up to see if the colors would match the room.”

   “[...] I beg you will go to Bailie Delap's shop, and get patterns of his best black bombaseen, and crape, and muslin, and bring them over to the parsonage, the morn's morning. [...] You will get, likewise, swatches of mourning print, with the lowest prices.”

   “I love knitting motif swatches. They're small and quick to make, allowing you to experiment with new stitch patterns and techniques without a big commitment in time and yarn.”

   “"Shall I give you some money now for the swatches?" asked Mrs. Flynn. / "What's a swatch?" Sophie asked suddenly. / "A swatch," said Zoey, "is a little sample of fabric that people use to pick and choose what will work for them without having to buy a whole yard. And fabric swatches are free! So don't worry."”

2. A selection of such samples bound together.

   ““Aisha, access the Pupa's informational color swatches. Okay, royal blue means the Pupa has kennel cough, cornflower blue means one of us just had a sex dream about the other one, navy blue means his Hulu plan is expiring, robin's egg blue means we get a free Xbox, Pacific blue means we all die at midnight!” [all gasp] “We were so close to gettin' that Xbox!””

3. (figuratively)A clump or portion of something.

   “I found myself truly moved by a stage event for the first time in years. I found myself humming tunes that one might not rightfully call tunes. Days later, I still remember these musical phrasings in little swatches of sound.”

   “Mix ultramarine blue and alizarin crimson in your palette until you get a rich purple, then paint a swatch on dry watercolor paper [...]. Next paint a swatch of ultramarine blue on dry watercolor paper. While this is still wet, add alizarin crimson to the lower part of the blue wash, and watch the colors connect and blend [...]. Compare the two swatches.”

   “A swatch of hair, cleaned with a cosmetic treatment (shampoo, conditioner, etc.), is wetted, combed and then tangled according to a standardized protocol. The combing forces on the swatch are measured with an extensometer.”

4. (figuratively)A demonstration, an example, a proof.

   “Pray Sir, pay off the Old Debt, before I truſt you more New. This is a Swatch of Your Faith, and how much You are a Man of Your Word.”

   “There were about nine score strangers in Midgehop; four score of them William Blaik entertained, [...]. And I believe their neighbour, Robert Bigger would be much the same. This I record once for all, for a swatch of the hospitality of the parish; for God has given this people a largeness of heart, to communicate of their substance, on these and other occasions also.”

   “Their choosing such a moderator, so guilty of our national defections, of commissions and omissions, was a swatch of what members in the first assembly was made up of; men who had sinned away zeal and faithfulness, by wallowing in that sink and puddle of our national abominations of indulgences and toleration, and many otherwise guilty of sinful and shameful silence and unfaithfulness; [...]”

5. (Northern-England, obsolete)A tag or other small object attached to another item as a means of identifying its owner; a tally; specifically the counterfoil of a tally.

   “A SWACHE, A Tally. N[orth] C[ountry]”

   “Swatch, s[ubstantive] a pattern, a sample, a tally. V[ide] Ray [Collection of English Words (London, 1691)], swache.”

6. (UK)A channel or passage of water between sandbanks, or between a sandbank and a seashore.

   “It muſt be obſerved, that the paſſages, called Cockerlees, are no other than ſwatches through the Long-Sand.”

   “The Swatch, or Swatch of no ground, a chaſm in the bank, is ſituated between the latitudes of 21° and 21° 22′ North, and the middle of it lies about 50 leagues Weſt of the meridian of the White Cliffs.”

   “Opposite the middle of the delta, at the distance of thirty or forty miles from the coast, a deep submarine valley occurs, called the "swatch of no ground," about fifteen miles in diameter, where soundings of 180, and even 300, fathoms fail to reach the bottom. […] As the mud is known to extend for eighty miles farther into the gulf, an enormous thickness of matter must have been deposited in "the swatch."”

verb

1. To create a swatch, especially a sample of knitted fabric.

   “Swatching is important in knitting to obtain the correct gauge.”

   “This season, before you even think about the makeup you need, think about the beige/grey/rust/brown colors—and the clothes—you've been seeing on the preceding pages (to remind you, we've swatched some of them here).”

   “Swatching may seem like a tedious chore when you're trying the gauge for a commercial yarn. But when you've just dyed your first skein of handpainted yarn, you'll be more than eager to see what it looks like worked up into a pattern.”

   “When I first learned how to knit, it didn't occur to me that beads could be incorporated into knitting. […] I swatched and ripped, then swatched and ripped again—until I figured out how to get the beads to lie exactly where I wanted them to be.”

name

1. A brand of relatively inexpensive Swiss analog watches.