What is a delegate?

A delegate is similar to a class that is used for storing the reference to a method and invoking that method at runtime, as required. A delegate can hold the reference of only those methods whose signatures are same as that of the delegate. Some of the examples of delegates are type-safe functions, pointers, or callbacks.

In other words(as per MSDN)

A delegate in C# is similar to a function pointer in C or C++. Using a delegate allows the programmer to encapsulate a reference to a method inside a delegate object. The delegate object can then be passed to code which can call the referenced method, without having to know at compile time which method will be invoked.