Background
See also: Landscape.
Dictionary 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]