foreground

n.

1. The part of a scene or picture that is nearest to and in front of the viewer.
2. See forefront (sense 2).

tr.v.
To place in the foreground; call attention to: "He is currently at work on a trilogy of pieces . . . which foreground the Algerian War" (Eleanor Heartney).

[Unix; common] To bring a task to the top of one's stack for immediate processing, and hackers often use it in this sense for non-computer tasks. “If your presentation is due next week, I guess I'd better foreground writing up the design document.”

Technically, on a timesharing system, a task executing in foreground is one able to accept input from and return output to the user; oppose background. Nowadays this term is primarily associated with Unix, but it appears first to have been used in this sense on OS/360. Normally, there is only one foreground task per terminal (or terminal window); having multiple processes simultaneously reading the keyboard is a good way to lose.

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IN BRIEF: The part of a scene or picture that is or seems to be nearest to the one looking at it.

In landscapes, things in the foreground appear to be bigger than those in the background.

Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has 2 meanings:

Meaning #1: the part of a scene that is near the viewer

Meaning #2: (computer science) a window for an active application

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The verb foreground has one meaning:

Meaning #1: move into the foreground to make more visible or prominent
  Synonyms: highlight, spotlight, play up
  Antonym: background (meaning #1)

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - forgrund
v. tr. - trække frem i forgrunden, lægge vægt på

Nederlands (Dutch)
voorgrond, op de voorgrond zetten

Français (French)
n. - premier plan
v. tr. - mettre en relief

Deutsch (German)
n. - Vordergrund, Führungsposition
v. - in den Vordergrund stellen

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (για πίνακες ζωγραφικής κ.λπ.) πρώτο πλάνο, πρώτη γραμμή

Italiano (Italian)
primo piano

Português (Portuguese)
n. - primeiro (m) plano

Русский (Russian)
авансцена, передний план, видное положение, на переднем плане, приоритетный

Español (Spanish)
n. - primer plano, primer término
v. tr. - poner en primer plano

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - förgrund

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
前景, 最显著的位置, 使突出, 强调

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 前景, 最顯著的位置
v. tr. - 使突出, 強調

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 앞쪽의 경치, 전경, 화려한 위치
v. tr. - 최전면에 놓다

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 前景, 最も目だつ位置, 最前面, 表面

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) طليعه , مقدمه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮קדמה, עמדה בולטת, רקע קדמי, החלק הקרוב‬
v. tr. - ‮הציב בעמדה קדמית, הבליט‬

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