background (
http://definr.com/background)
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:
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 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 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,
scope]
7: (computer science) the area of the screen in graphical user
interfaces against which icons and windows appear [syn:
desktop,
screen background]
8: scenery hung at back of stage [syn:
backdrop,
backcloth]
v : move into the background; "he played down his royal
ancestry" [syn:
play down] [ant:
foreground,
foreground]