Simply put, PostScript is a programming or page description language. It is a way of describing what a page should look like. Another such page description language is PCL (printer control language) found in HP printers. For the differences between PostScript and PCL see PS and PCL Comparisions.
Printers print dots. How these dots (raster images) are arranged on the page determines what you see, how the page looks. A printer uses an interpreter (printer driver) to translate digital documents created by your software into a raster image that the printer can print.
Some types of documents such as those created by graphic designers and desktop publishers, contain an intricate combination of fonts and graphics that are best described using PostScript. The PostScript language and a PostScript printer driver then tell the printer how to print that document. PostScript is generally device-independent, that is, if you create a PostScript file it will print pretty much the same on any PostScript device.
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