population
part of speech
noun (a population, populations)
meaning for a pupil
1) The number of people who live in a place. tree →
2) All the people, or all the animals or plants of one kind, living in an area: the bee population. tree →
3) (maths, formal) The whole group you are studying in statistics. tree →
sense in the lessons
In geography and maths lessons, populations of towns and countries are compared, rounded, added and put in order. In science, populations of animals grow or shrink. Phrases: population of, the world's population, population growth, a large population.
examples
- The population of our town is about 12 000. tree →
- The world's population is over eight billion. tree →
- The bee population is falling. tree →
- London has a bigger population than Dublin. tree →
- Round the population to the nearest thousand. tree →
- A rabbit population can grow very fast. tree →
- Well, they spread the news through the village; the whole population assembled and swarmed into the graveyard. tree →
note
Usually countable, but «the population» is often treated as one group. Maths: populations are big numbers to read, round, compare and subtract («how many more people live in A than B»). «Populated» means having people in it.
In the corpora
- Births of rare animals like gorillas or rhinos are celebrated, because a small population needs every healthy baby.
- "Population transfer" means forcing people out of their homes and moving them elsewhere.
- Population density means how many people live on each square kilometre, and Bangladesh has over 1,000 while Australia has about 3.
- Indigenous populations fell in many places after contact but are growing again; about 1 in 6 New Zealanders is Māori.
- Many wild animal populations have fallen since 1970; experts argue about exactly how much.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «population» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.