Noun background has 8 senses
  1. background - a person's social heritage: previous experience or training; "he is a lawyer with a sports background"
    --1 is a kind of
    inheritance, heritage
  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"
    --2 is a kind of view, aspect, prospect, scene, vista, panorama
  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"
    --3 is a kind of information
  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"
    --4 is a kind of noise, interference, disturbance
    --4 has particulars: background noise, ground noise; background radiation
  5. background - relatively unimportant or inconspicuous accompanying situation; "when the rain came he could hear the sound of thunder in the background"
    --5 is a kind of
    accompaniment, concomitant, co-occurrence
    Derived form: verb background1
  6. setting, background, scope - the state of the environment in which a situation exists; "you can't do that in a university setting"
    --6 is a kind of environment
    --6 has particulars: canvas, canvass; showcase, show window
  7. background, desktop, screen background - (computer science) the area of the screen in graphical user interfaces against which icons and windows appear
    --7 is a kind of screen, CRT screen
  8. backdrop, background, backcloth - scenery hung at back of stage
    --8 is a kind of scenery, scene
,Verb background has 1 sense
  1. background, play down, downplay - understate the importance or quality of; "he played down his royal ancestry"
    --1 is one way to stress, emphasize, emphasise, punctuate, accent, accentuate
    Antonyms: foreground, highlight, spotlight, play up
    Derived form: noun background5
    Sample sentences:
    Somebody ----s something
    Something ----s something
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