backgrounded

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of background.

   The film backgrounded its subplot to keep attention on the lead.

   Several concerns were backgrounded once the deadline approached.

   Note

   A regular -ed form, so it works both as a simple past (the editor backgrounded the story) and, with have or be, as a participle in perfect and passive clauses. It carries every sense of the verb, from the figurative 'made less prominent' to the cattle trade's backgrounded calves, fed on forage between weaning and the feedlot. Do not confuse it with background itself, which can be the past tense of backgrind.

2. 2
   adjective

   Moved into the background so as to be less prominent or less central.

   Like furniture pushed against a wall so the open floor draws the eye instead.

   The backgrounded subplot resurfaced only in the closing chapters.

   With the redesign, the old branding looked decidedly backgrounded.

   Similarmarginalized

   Oppositeprominent

   Note

   Unlike the adjective background (a background detail), which takes no degrees, this participle adjective grades: one element can be more backgrounded than another, or the most backgrounded of all. The -ed keeps the sense of something done to it, pushed back rather than simply sitting at the back. It grows directly out of the past-tense verb.

3. 3
   adjective

   Of a task, set to run without user interaction, continuing behind the active process.

   The backgrounded process kept syncing files while she edited the document.

   A backgrounded job finishes without holding up the terminal.

   Note

   Shell users meet it in job control: a backgrounded job is detached from the controlling terminal, so it keeps executing without blocking input, and other commands can run in the same session meanwhile. Its counterpart is the job occupying the foreground, which holds the terminal until it finishes. Process and job are the nouns it most often modifies, and it names a state after the move, not a kind of program.

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