# population

Pronunciation: US say "pop-yuh-LAY-shuhn" /ˌpɑ.pjəˈleɪ.ʃən/; UK say "pop-yuu-LAY-shuhn" /ˌpɒp.jʊˈleɪ.ʃən/

## Noun

1. The people who live in a particular country, region, town, or other area, or the total number of them.
   - Simple: All the people who live in a place, or how many people live there.
   - _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._
2. The group of people who share a given trait or characteristic of interest.
   - Simple: A group of people who all share something in common.
   - _Public health teams target the population most at risk of diabetes._
   - _Survey results differed sharply within the immigrant population._
3. A group of organisms of the same species sharing a characteristic of interest, most often living together in a given area.
   - Simple: All the animals or plants of one kind living in the same area.
   - _Conservationists monitor the wolf population across the national park._
   - _A small population of frogs survived in the isolated pond._
4. The entire group of people, objects, or items counted in a census or from which a sample is drawn.
   - Simple: In statistics, the whole group being studied or counted, from which a sample may be taken.
   - _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._
5. The main body of inmates in a prison, distinct from those held in isolation or special units.
   - Simple: The main group of prisoners, kept apart from those in special units.
   - _After two weeks in segregation, he was returned to the general population._
   - _The detainee was placed in population that same afternoon._
6. The act of filling initially empty items in a collection with values or data.
   - Simple: The act of filling empty spaces or fields with information.
   - _Population of the database tables happens automatically when the server starts._
   - _Careful population of each record prevented gaps in the final report._

## Other meanings

- (noun) The number of living cells in a pattern, as counted in a grid-based simulation from one generation to the next.

## 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.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/population (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).