Kontakt wants you to buy their samples. If they provided  sample recording capability and explained how to do it, more people would roll their own.
 
It isn't hard though. Bit already has the answer.

A sampler is anything that uses sampled or recorded sounds to generate noise.
 
A synthesizer is anything that produces artificial sounds from a basic sine wave generated electronically.
 
The old Mellotron was an early example of a sampler as it used piano keys to trigger a prerecorded sound on magnetic tape.
 
Technically Kontakt isn't a complete sampler but only part of one as it requires an outside source to actually produce sound. It's more korrektly a sample player/editor.

Of course I find samples that other people have rolled and put those into Kontakt go figure. Kontakt is really about being a platform for selling amazing instruments. To that end the scripts and the effects are what really sell the package. I view it the same way I view a game engine that is available for creating games. The game engine doesn't take pictures, record voiceovers, make music, etc, but it is kind of vital for making a good professional game. I'm a scripting idiot but with help from my friends even I can (I like to think) put out reasonable instruments that are certainly far better than the more limited stuff I do with Maize.

soens
A sampler is anything that uses sampled or recorded sounds to generate noise.

 
A sample player also does this. A true sampler can record sounds eg An Emulator is a sampler and can make presets from those recordings. What this does allow though is completely original sounds that no one else in the world actually has. For example I have complete banks of EMU sounds that I have sampled and made and are only available to me. Very original. The Kurzweil is also a sampler but also includes a complete synthesis engine called VAST which takes it into some completely diffeent territory.
 

soens
A synthesizer is anything that produces artificial sounds from a basic sine wave generated electronically.

 
A synthesiser uses many more waveforms than a sine wave. eg sawtooth, square, pulse width, noise etc. And this is for the analog synthesis engine only. There are many forms of synthesis engines eg FM, Additive, Granular, Vector, Spectral synthesis. That is very extremely limited view of a synthesiser.
 

soens
The old Mellotron was an early example of a sampler as it used piano keys to trigger a prerecorded sound on magnetic tape.

 
As samplers have the ability to record the Mellotron was a basic form of sample player only. You had to get the tapes and put them in.
 

soens
Technically Kontakt isn't a complete sampler but only part of one as it requires an outside source to actually produce sound. It's more korrektly a sample player/editor.

Yes this is first correct thing you have said here.

Not to nitpick bit I was speaking in simplified generalized terms and so don't really see anything incorrect in what I've said. A "sampler" by definition, which may be open to interpretation, does not have to have the ability to record or produce the sound it manipulates, according to the source I aquired my comments from, even though that's what we may think.

Even so, I appreciate the added details.

I appreciate the fact you liked the added details.  I suppose it harks back to the good old days such as the 80's when samplers were really samplers!  I must admit though that these days I do much less of it. Maybe I should get in there and do it like we used to.  The massive libraries were not around at first and we had no choice in many cases.  What you can certainly do now though is modify sounds in almost an unlimited way which is just as interesting.  But making very original sounds is quite a cool thing to do.
 
Iris 2 is a sampler in a way. It certainly allows you to import your own raw materials and a few others allow it as well very easily.  It is worth investigating if you are in the market for a sample player type device.

In the 90's, I had an Alesis Quadrasynth. This was a synthesizer. It was a sample and synthesis synthesizer. The same for my DM5 drum rack. I also had an Emu 6400, This was a sampler, because it could make samplers. A sample player is not a sampler.
 
Mellotron was a sample player really, not a sampler.

 
 To say that is limiting the term to a narrower meaning than it actually has.
 
sam·pler
ˈsamp(ə)lər/
noun: sampler; plural noun: sampler
1. a person or device that samples or collects, prepares, or examines samples
2. something containing representative specimens or selections
3. a piece of cloth embroidered with various stitches, serving to show a beginner's skill in needlework.
4. a collection of samples, selections, etc.
5. an electronic device that digitally encodes and stores samples of sound.
 
So even I can be a sampler.
 
From WIKI:
"A sampler is an electronic or digital musical instrument similar in some respects to a synthesizer, but instead of generating new sounds with filters and oscillators, it uses sound recordings (or "samples") of real instrument sounds (e.g., a piano, violin or trumpet), excerpts from recorded songs (e.g., a five second bass guitar riff from a funk song) or other sounds (e.g., car horns, sirens, ocean waves). The samples are loaded or recorded by the user or by a manufacturer. These sounds are then played back by means of the sampler program itself, a MIDI keyboard, sequencer or another triggering device (e.g., electronic drums) to perform or compose music.
 
Prior to computer memory-based samplers, musicians used tape replay keyboards, which store recordings on analog tape. When a key is pressed the tape head contacts the moving tape and plays a sound. The Mellotron was the most notable model, used by a number of groups in the late 1960s and the 1970s,..."

Kamikaze
In the 90's, I had an Alesis Quadrasynth.

Still have the original one. Never even tried it. Dern.

1. a person or device that samples or collects, prepares, or examines samples
2. something containing representative specimens or selections
3. a piece of cloth embroidered with various stitches, serving to show a beginner's skill in needlework.
4. a collection of samples, selections, etc.
5. an electronic device that digitally encodes and stores samples of sound.
 
This is sampling. This is not about playback, but making samples.
 
If you went into a music shop in 2000 and said 'I'm interested in sampler for making R'n'b and I've seen one I like' and the shop assistant said 'Is it an Akai s900, or MPC, or was it the Emu Ultra you wanted' and you said 'no, it's the emu planet phat', the shop keeper would say 'oh, that's a synth rack, not a sampler, you can't actually sample with that'.
 
A baker bakes
A writer writes
A sampler samples
 
No body ever called a mellotron a sampler in the 60's and 70's. The terminology appeared along with the fairlight.
 
Wikipedia isn't fact. Until about 2005 bands like Prodigy, Orbital, Underworld, Ddaftpunk, Royksopp, were all listed as dance acts, then some young Americans started calling it EDM, and editing the Wikipedia entries. A battle ensued between the older generation that supported these bands in the hayday, correcting the entries back to just dance music, but eventually they gave up and now they are listed as EDM.
 
If Kontact was released in 1997, it would have been called a sample player, because it can't sample. Sampling was central to dance music, but now it's all soundbanks. Which synths have been able to play and load for decades now.