background

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a person's social heritage: previous experience or training

   They are a lawyer with a sports background.

2. 2
   noun

   information that is essential to understanding a situation or problem

   The embassy filled them in on the background of the incident.

3. 3
   noun

   the part of a scene or picture ,that lies behind objects in the foreground

   We posed them against a background of rolling hills.

4. 4
   noun

   relatively unimportant or inconspicuous accompanying situation

   When the rain came we could hear the sound of thunder in the background.

5. 5
   noun

   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

6. 6
   verb

   to understate the importance or quality of

   I unintentionally backgrounded the old data in my presentation.

7. 7
   adj

   Less important or less noticeable in a scene or system.

   background noise

8. 8
   noun

   One's social heritage, or previous life; what one did in the past.

   The lawyer had a background in computer science.

Etymology

From back + ground. Compare backstory.