From the docs
PVs are resources in the cluster. PVCs are requests for those resources and also act as claim checks to the resource.
So a persistent volume (PV) is the “physical” volume on the host machine that stores your persistent data. A persistent volume claim (PVC) is a request for the platform to create a PV for you, and you attach PVs to your pods via a PVC.
Something akin to
Pod -> PVC -> PV -> Host machine