living in or characteristic of farming or country life; "rural people"; "large rural households"; "unpaved rural roads"; "an economy that is basically rural"
relating to rural areas; "rural electrification"; "rural free delivery (RFD)"
(computer science) the area of the screen in graphical user interfaces against which icons and windows appear
a person's social heritage: previous experience or training; "he is a lawyer with a sports background"
information that is essential to understanding a situation or problem; "the embassy filled him in on the background of the incident"
the part of a scene (or picture) that lies behind objects in the foreground; "he posed her against a background of rolling hills"
relatively unimportant or inconspicuous accompanying situation; "when the rain came he could hear the sound of thunder in the background"
extraneous 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"
understate the importance or quality of; "he played down his royal ancestry"
the act of referring or consulting; "reference to an encyclopedia produced the answer"
the most direct or specific meaning of a word or expression; the class of objects that an expression refers to; "the extension of `satellite of Mars' is the set containing only Demos and Phobos"
the relation between a word or phrase and the object or idea it refers to; "he argued that reference is a consequence of conditioned reflexes"
a publication (or a passage from a publication) that is referred to; "he carried an armful of references back to his desk"; "he spent hours looking for the source of that quotation"
a familiar name for a person (often a shortened version of a person's given name); "Joe's mother would not use his nickname and always called him Joseph"; "Henry's nickname was Slim"
a descriptive name for a place or thing; "the nickname for the U.S. Constitution is `Old Ironsides'"
a unifying idea that is a recurrent element in a literary or artistic work; "it was the usual `boy gets girl' theme"
(music) melodic subject of a musical composition; "the theme is announced in the first measures"; "the accompanist picked up the idea and elaborated it"
provide with a particular theme or motive; "the restaurant often themes its menus"
a thing constructed; a complex entity constructed of many parts; "the structure consisted of a series of arches"; "she wore her hair in an amazing construction of whirls and ribbons"
the manner of construction of something and the arrangement of its parts; "artists must study the structure of the human body"; "the structure of the benzene molecule"
a particular complex anatomical part; "he has good bone structure"
the complex composition of knowledge as elements and their combinations; "his lectures have no structure"
give a structure to; "I need to structure my days"