Definitions:

1. a person's social heritage: previous experience or training noun
   • They are a lawyer with a sports background.
2. extraneous signals that can be confused with the phenomenon to be observed or measured noun
   • they got a bad connection and could hardly hear one another over the background signals
3. information that is essential to understanding a situation or problem noun
   • The embassy filled them in on the background of the incident.
4. relatively unimportant or inconspicuous accompanying situation noun
   • When the rain came we could hear the sound of thunder in the background.
5. the part of a scene or picture ,that lies behind objects in the foreground noun
   • We posed them against a background of rolling hills.
6. to understate the importance or quality of verb
   • I unintentionally backgrounded the old data in my presentation.

Synonyms:

• backdrop
• background knowledge
• background signal
• desktop
• downplay
• ground
• play down
• scope
• screen background
• setting

NearBy Words:

• backgrounder
• backgrounding