| English Dictionary |
BACKGROUND
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
| IPA (US): |  |
Dictionary entry overview: What does background mean?
• BACKGROUND (noun)
The noun BACKGROUND has 8 senses:
1. a person's social heritage: previous experience or training
2. the part of a scene (or picture) that lies behind objects in the foreground
3. information that is essential to understanding a situation or problem
4. extraneous signals that can be confused with the phenomenon to be observed or measured
5. relatively unimportant or inconspicuous accompanying situation
6. the state of the environment in which a situation exists
7. (computer science) the area of the screen in graphical user interfaces against which icons and windows appear
8. scenery hung at back of stage
Familiarity information: BACKGROUND used as a noun is common.
• BACKGROUND (verb)
The verb BACKGROUND has 1 sense:
1. understate the importance or quality of
Familiarity information: BACKGROUND used as a verb is very rare.
Dictionary entry details
Sense 1
Meaning:
A person's social heritage: previous experience or training
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Context example:
he is a lawyer with a sports background
Hypernyms ("background" is a kind of...):
heritage; inheritance (any attribute or immaterial possession that is inherited from ancestors)
Sense 2
Meaning:
The part of a scene (or picture) that lies behind objects in the foreground
Classified under:
Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents
Synonyms:
background; ground
Context example:
he posed her against a background of rolling hills
Hypernyms ("background" is a kind of...):
aspect; panorama; prospect; scene; view; vista (the visual percept of a region)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Information that is essential to understanding a situation or problem
Classified under:
Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents
Synonyms:
background; background knowledge
Context example:
the embassy filled him in on the background of the incident
Hypernyms ("background" is a kind of...):
information (knowledge acquired through study or experience or instruction)
Derivation:
backgrounder (a press conference or interview in which a government official explains to reporters the background of an action or policy)
Sense 4
Meaning:
Extraneous signals that can be confused with the phenomenon to be observed or measured
Classified under:
Nouns denoting natural events
Synonyms:
background; background signal
Context example:
they got a bad connection and could hardly hear one another over the background signals
Hypernyms ("background" is a kind of...):
disturbance; interference; noise (electrical or acoustic activity that can disturb communication)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "background"):
background noise; ground noise (extraneous noise contaminating sound measurements that cannot be separated from the desired signal)
background radiation (radiation coming from sources other than those being observed)
Sense 5
Meaning:
Relatively unimportant or inconspicuous accompanying situation
Classified under:
Nouns denoting natural events
Context example:
when the rain came he could hear the sound of thunder in the background
Hypernyms ("background" is a kind of...):
accompaniment; attendant; co-occurrence; concomitant (an event or situation that happens at the same time as or in connection with another)
Derivation:
background (understate the importance or quality of)
Sense 6
Meaning:
The state of the environment in which a situation exists
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Synonyms:
Context example:
you can't do that in a university setting
Hypernyms ("background" is a kind of...):
environment (the totality of surrounding conditions)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "background"):
canvas; canvass (the setting for a narrative or fictional or dramatic account)
show window; showcase (a setting in which something can be displayed to best effect)
Sense 7
Meaning:
(computer science) the area of the screen in graphical user interfaces against which icons and windows appear
Classified under:
Nouns denoting man-made objects
Synonyms:
background; desktop; screen background
Hypernyms ("background" is a kind of...):
CRT screen; screen (the display that is electronically created on the surface of the large end of a cathode-ray tube)
Domain category:
computer science; computing (the branch of engineering science that studies (with the aid of computers) computable processes and structures)
Sense 8
Meaning:
Scenery hung at back of stage
Classified under:
Nouns denoting man-made objects
Synonyms:
backcloth; backdrop; background
Hypernyms ("background" is a kind of...):
scene; scenery (the painted structures of a stage set that are intended to suggest a particular locale)
| Conjugation: |
... he / she / it backgrounds Past simple: backgrounded
Past participle: backgrounded
-ing form: backgrounding
Sense 1
Meaning:
Understate the importance or quality of
Classified under:
Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.
Synonyms:
background; downplay; play down
Context example:
he played down his royal ancestry
Hypernyms (to "background" is one way to...):
accent; accentuate; emphasise; emphasize; punctuate; stress (to stress, single out as important)
Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "background"):
wave off (dismiss as insignificant)
soft-pedal (play down or obscure)
Sentence frames:
Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something
Antonym:
foreground (move into the foreground to make more visible or prominent)
Derivation:
background (relatively unimportant or inconspicuous accompanying situation)
Context examples
Because telescopes cannot see them, though, astronomers have been hunting for indirect evidence, such as a tell-tale change in the background electromagnetic radiation that permeates the universe, called the cosmic microwave background (CMB).
(Astronomers detect ancient signal from first stars in universe, National Science Foundation)
The ability of brain regions to activate neurons in harmony with each other, thereby elevating a specific signal above the background noise may be impaired in many brain disorders.
(How the brain pays attention to faces and places, NIH)
Such lesions in TRAMP and LPB-Tag mice noted against background meeting criteria for HGPIN, as noted below.
(Combined Epithelial / Stromal Atypical Hyperplasia of the Mouse Prostate Gland, NCI Thesaurus/MMHCC)
This happens because at some point in the maternal lineage, there was a mother from a different ethnic background.
(Interplay between mitochondria and the nucleus may have implications for changing cell’s ‘batteries’, University of Cambridge)
Within the last decade, some scientists have been challenging the supernova interpretation, suggesting that much or all of the soft X-ray diffuse background is instead a result of charge exchange.
(Evidence for supernovas near Earth, NASA)
The following day brought news from Richmond to throw every thing else into the background.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
Previous papers have documented how background levels of the gas seem to rise and fall seasonally.
(Curiosity Detects Unusually High Methane Levels, NASA)
The brightest eruption features, which appear to be discrete jets, look to them to be superimposed intermittently upon this background structure.
(Saturn Moon's Activity Could Be 'Curtain Eruptions', NASA)
ESA's Planck satellite, a mission with significant participation from NASA, has revealed that the first stars in the universe started forming later than previous observations of the cosmic microwave background indicated.
(First Stars Formed Later Than We Thought, NASA)
A benign skin tumor characterized as a small, dome-shaped dermal nodule composed of fibroblasts in a dense collagenous background with storiform organization.
(Circumscribed Storiform Collagenoma, NCI Thesaurus)
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