Other forms: populations
The population of a place is how many people live there. The number on the sign as you drive into a village, the figure beside a country's name in an atlas, the total a census counts every ten years.
It is not only people: biologists talk about the bee population of a hedgerow or the deer population of a forest. In statistics, the population is the whole group under study and the sample is the part actually measured. Keep the family straight: populated (a densely populated city), populous (having many people), and popular, which sits in the same family and means well liked. The general population means everybody outside whatever special group is being discussed.
1nounpopulationThe number of people living in a place.
“The city's population has grown quickly over the last ten years.”
2nounplaceAll the people living in a place, taken as a group.
“Half the population had never voted before.”
3nounanimalsAll the animals or plants of one kind living in an area.
“The otter population has recovered since the river was cleaned.”
4nounentireThe entire group being studied, from which a sample is taken.
“The sample was too small to say anything about the population as a whole.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
population is a count of inhabitants.
Population comes from Latin populatio, a people or a multitude, formed on populus, a people, and it can be read as populate plus -ion. It has a twin that came by another road: Spanish poblacion is the same word. The number, the crowd and the whole species count all sit on that one Latin word for a people.
Latin
populatio — a people, multitude
English, today
population
Latin populatio (“a people, multitude”), as if a noun of action from Classical Latin populus, equivalent to populate + -ion. a doublet of poblacion.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA