Dividend
A payment a company makes to its shareholders out of its profits, usually in cash and often every 3 months.
Not every company pays dividends, and those that do can cut or stop them. Funds that hold dividend-paying stocks pass the payments on to you.
You can take dividends as cash or reinvest them to buy more shares, which lets them compound. In a taxable brokerage account, dividends are usually taxed in the year you get them, even if you reinvest.
Example
Owning 100 shares that pay $0.50 per share every 3 months brings in 100 × $0.50 = $50 a quarter, or $50 × 4 = $200 a year.