English Dictionary

BACKGROUND

Pronunciation (US): Play  (GB): Play

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 trainingplay

2. the part of a scene (or picture) that lies behind objects in the foregroundplay

3. information that is essential to understanding a situation or problemplay

4. extraneous signals that can be confused with the phenomenon to be observed or measuredplay

5. relatively unimportant or inconspicuous accompanying situationplay

6. the state of the environment in which a situation existsplay

7. (computer science) the area of the screen in graphical user interfaces against which icons and windows appearplay

8. scenery hung at back of stageplay

  Familiarity information: BACKGROUND used as a noun is common.


BACKGROUND (verb)
  The verb BACKGROUND has 1 sense:

1. understate the importance or quality ofplay

  Familiarity information: BACKGROUND used as a verb is very rare.


 Dictionary entry details 


BACKGROUND (noun)


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:

background; scope; setting

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)


BACKGROUND (verb)

 Conjugation: 
Present simple: I / you / we / they background  Listen to US pronunciation  Listen to GB pronunciation ... he / she / it backgrounds  Listen to US pronunciation  Listen to GB pronunciation
Past simple: backgrounded  Listen to US pronunciation  Listen to GB pronunciation
Past participle: backgrounded  Listen to US pronunciation  Listen to GB pronunciation
-ing form: backgrounding  Listen to US pronunciation  Listen to GB pronunciation


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)



 Learn English with... Proverbs 
"Bread is the staff of life." (English proverb)

"The eagle flies in the sky, but nests on the ground." (Albanian proverb)

"The purest people are the ones with good manners." (Arabic proverb)

"The blacksmith's horse has no horseshoes." (Czech proverb)



ALSO IN ENGLISH DICTIONARY:


© 2000-2023 AudioEnglish.org | AudioEnglish® is a Registered Trademark | Terms of use and privacy policy
Contact