Imagine that you’re eating candy out of a bowl. You take one piece regularly. To prevent the bowl from running out, someone might refill the bowl before it gets empty, so that when you want to take another piece, there’s candy in the bowl.
The bowl acts as a buffer between you and the candy bag.
If you’re watching a movie online, the web service will continually download the next 5 minutes or so into a buffer, that way your computer doesn’t have to download the movie as you’re watching it (which would cause hanging).