A terminal emulator is like a pretend computer screen that you can use on your real computer. It lets you type in commands just like you would on a real computer. When you press a button, the terminal emulator sends the command to the computer and shows you the results on the pretend screen. It's kind of like playing pretend, but with computers! People use terminal emulators for lots of different things, like making changes to their computer, running fancy programs, or just for fun.