foreground

vt. [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.

