"NP" stands for "nondeterministic polynomial time," a complexity class in computer science. It includes decision problems for which a solution can be verified quickly, in polynomial time, by a deterministic Turing machine. This means that if you have a proposed solution, you can check its correctness efficiently. A well-known example of an NP problem is the Traveling Salesman Problem, where the goal is to find the shortest possible route that visits a set of cities and returns to the origin. While finding a solution may take a long time, verifying a given route's length is quick, illustrating the characteristics of NP problems.