population

noun populations · pop'n

1. The people living within a political or geographical boundary. The population of New Jersey will not stand for this!
2. broadly The people with a given characteristic. India has the third-largest population of English-speakers in the world.
3. A count of the number of residents within a political or geographical boundary such as a town, a nation or the world. The town’s population is only 243.
4. The number of living cells in a pattern. This is one of several known "sawtooth" patterns, in which the population is unbounded but does not tend to infinity.
5. A collection of organisms of a particular species, sharing a particular characteristic of interest, most often that of living in a given area. A seasonal migration annually changes the populations in two or more biotopes drastically, many twice in opposite senses.
6. A group of units (persons, objects, or other items) enumerated in a census or from which a sample is drawn. […]it is possible it [the Anglo-Saxon race] might stand second to the Scandinavian countries [in average height] if a fair sample of their population were obtained.
7. The act of filling initially empty items in a collection. John clicked the Search button and waited for the population of the list to complete.
8. General population. I would like to say something about the place I am doing time at. When I was placed in population, I met another woman and we immediately became good friends.