Instead of providing my own description i may ask you to read about it for example here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_shadowing. Once you understood the shadowing of variables i recommend you proceed reading about overlaying/ shadowed methods and visibility in general to get a full understanding of such terms.
Actually since the question was asked in Terms of Java here is a mini-example:
public class Shadow {
private int myIntVar = 0;
public void shadowTheVar(){
// since it has the same name as above object instance field, it shadows above
// field inside this method
int myIntVar = 5;
// If we simply refer to 'myIntVar' the one of this method is found
// (shadowing a seond one with the same name)
System.out.println(myIntVar);
// If we want to refer to the shadowed myIntVar from this class we need to
// refer to it like this:
System.out.println(this.myIntVar);
}
public static void main(String[] args){
new Shadow().shadowTheVar();
}
}