What does CSS stand for, and what is its role in web development?

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets, and it plays a crucial role in web development by defining the visual presentation of web pages. It allows developers to separate content from design, enabling cleaner HTML structures while providing greater control over layout, colors, fonts, and overall aesthetics of a website. With CSS, developers can apply styles not only to individual elements but also to groups of elements, and it supports responsive design principles, which ensures websites look great on a variety of devices. The cascading aspect of CSS allows style rules to be applied in a hierarchical manner, with the possibility of overriding styles based on specificity and importance, offering flexibility in how styles are managed across a web application.