Background - Definition

n 1: a person's social heritage: previous experience or
training; "he is a lawyer with a sports background"
2: the part of a scene (or picture) that lies behind objects in
the foreground; "he posed her against a background of rolling
hills" [syn: background, ground]
3: information that is essential to understanding a situation or
problem; "the embassy filled him in on the background of the
incident" [syn: background, background knowledge]
4: 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"
[syn: background, background signal]
5: relatively unimportant or inconspicuous accompanying
situation; "when the rain came he could hear the sound of
thunder in the background"
6: the state of the environment in which a situation exists;
"you can't do that in a university setting" [syn: setting,
background, scope]
7: (computer science) the area of the screen in graphical user
interfaces against which icons and windows appear [syn:
background, desktop, screen background]
8: scenery hung at back of stage [syn: backdrop, background,
backcloth]
v 1: understate the importance or quality of; "he played down
his royal ancestry" [syn: background, play down,
downplay] [ant: foreground, highlight, play up,
spotlight]