Library / English Dictionary

FOREGROUND

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

(computer science) a window for an active application

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("foreground" is a kind of...):

window ((computer science) a rectangular part of a computer screen that contains a display different from the rest of the screen)

Domain category:

computer science; computing (the branch of engineering science that studies (with the aid of computers) computable processes and structures)

Holonyms ("foreground" is a part of...):

CRT screen; screen (the display that is electronically created on the surface of the large end of a cathode-ray tube)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The part of a scene that is near the viewer

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Hypernyms ("foreground" is a kind of...):

aspect; panorama; prospect; scene; view; vista (the visual percept of a region)

Derivation:

foreground (move into the foreground to make more visible or prominent)

 II. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Move into the foreground to make more visible or prominent

Example:

The introduction highlighted the speaker's distinguished career in linguistics

Synonyms:

foreground; highlight; play up; spotlight

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Hypernyms (to "foreground" is one way to...):

bring out; set off (direct attention to, as if by means of contrast)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something

Antonym:

background (understate the importance or quality of)

Derivation:

foreground (the part of a scene that is near the viewer)

Credits

 Context examples: 

There was a pale-green foreground of feathery vegetation, which sloped upwards and ended in a line of cliffs dark red in color, and curiously ribbed like some basaltic formations which I have seen.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He talked of foregrounds, distances, and second distances—side-screens and perspectives—lights and shades; and Catherine was so hopeful a scholar that when they gained the top of Beechen Cliff, she voluntarily rejected the whole city of Bath as unworthy to make part of a landscape.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

The astronomers measured how the light emitted by oxygen and neon gas orbiting each of the quasars' black holes is warped by the gravity of a massive foreground galaxy, which acts as a magnifying lens.

(Cosmic Magnifying Glasses Find Dark Matter in Small Clumps, NASA)

In this method, the light of a distant star is magnified by a closer star that happens to pass in front — if a planet is also present around the foreground star, it will further alter and distort the light of the background star.

(Newfound Frozen World Orbits in Binary Star System, NASA)

Then an instant later a second shout broke forth, beginning from the other side of the arena, and the faces which had been turned towards us whisked round, so that in a twinkling the whole foreground changed from white to dark.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

When we overlaid the radio and optical images, we could see straight away that the fast radio burst pierced the halo of this coincident foreground galaxy and, for the first time, we had a direct way of investigating the otherwise invisible matter surrounding this galaxy, said coauthor Cherie Day, a PhD student at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia.

(Enigmatic radio burst illuminates a galaxy’s tranquil ​halo, ESO)

They also used Icarus to test one theory of dark matter, and to probe the make-up of a foreground galaxy cluster.

(Hubble Uncovers the Farthest Star Ever Seen, NASA)

Gravitational microlensing occurs when the gravity of a foreground star bends and amplifies the light of a background star that momentarily aligns with it.

(Hubble Finds Planet Orbiting Pair of Stars, NASA)

Throwing these into distance, rose, in the foreground, a head,—a colossal head, inclined towards the iceberg, and resting against it.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

A planet orbiting the foreground object may cause an additional blip in the star's brightness.

('Iceball' Planet Discovered Through Microlensing, NASA)