Source : Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

Foreground \Fore"ground`\, n.
   On a painting, and sometimes in a bas-relief, mosaic picture,
   or the like, that part of the scene represented, which is
   nearest to the spectator, and therefore occupies the lowest
   part of the work of art itself. Cf. {Distance}, n., 6.

Source : WordNet®

foreground
     n 1: the part of a scene that is near the viewer
     2: (computer science) a window for an active application

foreground
     v : move into the foreground to make more visible or prominent;
         "The introduction highlighted the speaker's distinguished
         career in linguistics" [syn: {highlight}, {spotlight}, {play
         up}] [ant: {background}, {background}]

Source : Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing

foreground
     
        (Unix) On a {time-sharing} system, a task executing in
        foreground is one able to accept input from and return output
        to the user in contrast to one running in the {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 confusing.
     
        [{Jargon File}]
     
        (1994-10-24)