It means  that the field or method is accessible via the class. Example:


public class Thing{

public static  void staticMethod(){ }

public void instanceMethod(){ }

}


The method staticMethod() can be accessed via Thing.staticMethod() and
you don't need an object, whereas with the instanceMethod() you would
first need to create an instance of MyClass to access the method:

Thing thing = new Thing();
thing.instanceMethod();