1. (

• population

) the people who inhabit a territory or state; "the population seemed to be well fed and clothed" ;

2. (

• population ,

) a group of organisms of the same species inhabiting a given area; "they hired hunters to keep down the deer population" ;

3. (

• population ,
• universe ,

) (statistics) the entire aggregation of items from which samples can be drawn; "it is an estimate of the mean of the population" ;

4. (

• population

) the number of inhabitants (either the total number or the number of a particular race or class) in a given place (country or city etc.); "people come and go, but the population of this town has remained approximately constant for the past decade"; "the African-American population of Salt Lake City has been increasing" ;

5. (

• population

) the act of populating (causing to live in a place); "he deplored the population of colonies with convicted criminals" ;