From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wn]:
population
n 1: the people who inhabit a territory or state; "the
population seemed to be well fed and clothed"
2: a group of organisms of the same species inhabiting a given
area; "they hired hunters to keep down the deer population"
3: (statistics) the entire aggregation of items from which
samples can be drawn; "it is an estimate of the mean of the
population" [syn: population, universe]
4: 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: the act of populating (causing to live in a place); "he
deplored the population of colonies with convicted criminals"
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Population \Pop`u*la"tion\, n. [L. populatio: cf. F.
population.]
1. The act or process of populating; multiplication of
inhabitants.
[1913 Webster]
2. The whole number of people, or inhabitants, in a country,
or portion of a country; as, a population of ten millions.
[1913 Webster]