Mutex
/ˈmjuːtɛks/
noun — "locks a resource to one thread at a time."
Mutex, short for mutual exclusion, is a synchronization primitive used in multithreaded or multiprocess systems to control access to shared resources. It ensures that only one thread or process can access a critical section or resource at a time, preventing race conditions, data corruption, or inconsistent state. When a thread locks a mutex, other threads attempting to acquire the same mutex are blocked until it is released.