1. (

• background

) a person's social heritage: previous experience or training; "he is a lawyer with a sports background" ;

2. (

• background ,
• ground

) the part of a scene (or picture) that lies behind objects in the foreground; "he posed her against a background of rolling hills" ;

3. (

• background ,
• background_knowledge

) information that is essential to understanding a situation or problem; "the embassy filled him in on the background of the incident" ;

4. (

• background ,
• background_signal

) 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" ;

5. (

• background ,

) relatively unimportant or inconspicuous accompanying situation; "when the rain came he could hear the sound of thunder in the background" ;

6. (

• setting ,
• background ,
• scope

) the state of the environment in which a situation exists; "you can't do that in a university setting" ;

7. (

• background ,
• desktop ,
• screen_background

) (computer science) the area of the screen in graphical user interfaces against which icons and windows appear ;

8. (

• backdrop ,
• background ,
• backcloth

) scenery hung at back of stage ;

1. (

• background ,
• play_down ,
• downplay

) understate the importance or quality of; "he played down his royal ancestry" ;