Dictionary definition · background
noun
- a person's social heritage: previous experience or training"he is a lawyer with a sports background"
- the part of a scene (or picture) that lies behind objects in the foreground"he posed her against a background of rolling hills"
- information that is essential to understanding a situation or problem"the embassy filled him in on the background of the incident"
- extraneous signals that can be confused with the phenomenon to be observed or measured"they got a bad connection and could hardly hear one another over the background signals"
- relatively unimportant or inconspicuous accompanying situation"when the rain came he could hear the sound of thunder in the background"
- the state of the environment in which a situation exists"you can't do that in a university setting"
- (computer science) the area of the screen in graphical user interfaces against which icons and windows appear
- scenery hung at back of stage
verb
- understate the importance or quality of"he played down his royal ancestry"
Similar words
Source: Open English WordNet (CC BY 4.0).