Open English Wordnet
Nouns
(n)backgrounda person's social heritage: previous experience or training“he is a lawyer with a sports background”
(n)background, groundthe part of a scene (or picture) that lies behind objects in the foreground“he posed her against a background of rolling hills”
(n)background, background knowledgeinformation that is essential to understanding a situation or problem“the embassy filled him in on the background of the incident”
(n)background, background signalextraneous 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”
(n)backgroundrelatively unimportant or inconspicuous accompanying situation“when the rain came he could hear the sound of thunder in the background”
(n)setting, background, scopethe state of the environment in which a situation exists“you can't do that in a university setting”
(n)background, desktop, screen background(computer science) the area of the screen in graphical user interfaces against which icons and windows appear
Verbs
(v)background, play down, downplayunderstate the importance or quality of“he played down his royal ancestry”