population
Pluralpopulations
- 1The people who live in a particular country, region, town, or other area, or the total number of them.
The region's population includes many families who arrived in the last decade.
Rapid migration to cities has reshaped the rural population across the continent.
UsageDescribed as large or small: a large population. Ask what is the population of a place (not
incorrect: how many population).Similarcommunity
- 2The group of people who share a given trait or characteristic of interest.
Public health teams target the population most at risk of diabetes.
Survey results differed sharply within the immigrant population.
UsageThe group is named by a word in front or after of: the immigrant population, a population of English speakers.
Similargroup
Note
Stretched from place to trait: the boundary that defines the people of a region gives way to a shared feature.
- 3A group of organisms of the same species sharing a characteristic of interest, most often living together in a given area.
Conservationists monitor the wolf population across the national park.
A small population of frogs survived in the isolated pond.
UsageThe animal or plant comes before population or after of: the wolf population, a population of frogs.
Note
The biologist's unit is defined by species first and place second, and it is freely plural. The Flora of North America (2006) compares traits "within and among populations of grindelias", and a single migration can reshape the populations of several biotopes at once.
- 4The entire group of people, objects, or items counted in a census or from which a sample is drawn.
The survey drew a random sample from the entire population of registered voters.
Instead of questioning the whole population of voters, the researchers interviewed a random sample of five hundred.
Note
Statistics defines it against its partner, the sample: the population is everything, and the sample is the part actually measured. The Final Report of the Anthropometric Committee (1883), drawn up by C. Roberts and Sir Rawson W. Rawson, already pairs them, hoping for "a fair sample of their population." Its members need not be people at all, since objects and other items qualify. That is what separates it from the people sharing a trait.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- The Final Report of the Anthropometric Committee was published in 1883. wellcomecollection.org
- Galton chaired the committee; the report explicitly credits C. Roberts and Sir Rawson W. Rawson with drawing it up. wellcomecollection.org
- The report pairs sample and population in the exact quoted phrase. upload.wikimedia.org
Less common meanings
- 5The main body of inmates in a prison, distinct from those held in isolation or special units.
After two weeks in segregation, he was returned to the general population.
The detainee was placed in population that same afternoon.
UsageUsually with no article: placed in population, sent back to population; the full form is the general population.
Note
Prison speech clips general population to the bare noun, usually with no article at all: an inmate is placed in population or returned to it, in contrast to time spent in segregation. Jackie Beattie, writing in Gay Community News in 1985, recalls meeting a friend "when I was placed in population."
- 6The act of filling initially empty items in a collection with values or data.
Population of the database tables happens automatically when the server starts.
Careful population of each record prevented gaps in the final report.
UsageUsually followed by of and the thing being filled: the population of a table or a form.
Similarfilling
Note
The one sense that names an action rather than a group: the noun of populate as programmers use it, when a list or table is filled with values.
- 7The number of living cells in a pattern, as counted in a grid-based simulation from one generation to the next.
Practice
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Origin
Came into English from Late Latin populatio ("a people, multitude"), a word built on Classical Latin populus ("people") as though a verb stood behind it. In English terms it is populate + -ion, and poblacion is a doublet of it.