background vs history

background

noun
  • Information relevant to the current situation about past events; history. 

  • One's social heritage, or previous life; what one did in the past. 

  • The image or color over which a computer's desktop items are shown (e.g. icons or application windows). 

  • A part of the picture that depicts scenery to the rear or behind the main subject; context. 

  • A less important feature of scenery (as opposed to foreground). 

  • A type of activity on a computer that is not normally visible to the user. 

verb
  • To put in a position that is not prominent. 

  • To gather and provide background information (on). 

adj
  • Less important or less noticeable in a scene or system. 

history

noun
  • A record or narrative description of past events. 

  • A record of previous user events, especially of visited web pages in a browser. 

  • The aggregate of past events. 

  • Something that no longer exists or is no longer relevant. 

  • The portion of the past that is known and recorded by this field of study, as opposed to all earlier and unknown times that preceded it (prehistory). 

  • A set of events involving an entity. 

  • Shared experience or interaction. 

  • The branch of knowledge that studies the past; the assessment of notable events. 

  • A list of past and continuing medical conditions of an individual or family. 

How often have the words background and history occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )