| background | (n) a person's social heritage: previous experience or training, Example: he is a lawyer with a sports background |
| background | (n) the part of a scene (or picture) that lies behind objects in the foreground, Syn. ground, Example: he posed her against a background of rolling hills |
| background | (n) information that is essential to understanding a situation or problem, Syn. background knowledge, Example: the embassy filled him in on the background of the incident |
| background | (n) extraneous signals that can be confused with the phenomenon to be observed or measured, Syn. background signal, Example: they got a bad connection and could hardly hear one another over the background signals |
| background | (n) relatively unimportant or inconspicuous accompanying situation, Example: when the rain came he could hear the sound of thunder in the background |
| background | (n) (computer science) the area of the screen in graphical user interfaces against which icons and windows appear, Syn. desktop, screen background |
| background | (v) understate the importance or quality of, Syn. play down, downplay, Ant. play up, foreground, Example: he played down his royal ancestry |
| backgrounder | (n) a press conference or interview in which a government official explains to reporters the background of an action or policy, Example: the secretary gave us a backgrounder on public health issues |
| background noise | (n) extraneous noise contaminating sound measurements that cannot be separated from the desired signal, Syn. ground noise |
| background processing | (n) the execution of low priority programs while higher priority programs are not using the processing system, Syn. backgrounding |
| background | n. [ Back, a. + ground. ] [ 1913 Webster ] ☞ The distance in a picture is usually divided into foreground, middle distance, and background. Fairholt. [ 1913 Webster ] I fancy there was a background of grinding and waiting before Miss Torry could produce this highly finished . . . performance. Mrs. Alexander. [ 1913 Webster ] A husband somewhere in the background. Thackeray. [ 1913 Webster ]
|
| backgrounding | n. (Computers) The execution of low priority programs while higher priority programs are not using the processing system. |