Windows Terminal is basically a host that enables you to run multiple command-line apps or shells side-by-side in customizable environment using tabs or window panes. Examples of "shell" applications include cmd.exe (the traditional Windows Command Prompt), powershell, or zsh. These are text-only applications that provide streams of characters and don't care about how they are rendered to the user. They are also sometimes referred to as "command-line client" applications. On the other hand, "terminal" applications, like Windows Terminal, gnome-terminal, xterm, iterm2, or hyper, are all graphical applications that can be used to render the output of command-line clients, customizing things like font, text size, colors, etc. On Windows, if you run cmd.exe, the operating system will create an instance of conhost.exe as the "terminal" for displaying the cmd.exe command-line client. The same thing happens for PowerShell, the system creates a new conhost window for any client not already connected to a terminal of some kind. Any terminal can run any command-line client application, so Windows Terminal can run any shell you prefer, such as Bash using Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).