Introsort, short for "introspective sort," is a hybrid sorting algorithm that combines the quicksort, heapsort, and insertion sort algorithms. It begins with quicksort and switches to heapsort when the recursion depth exceeds a certain threshold, ensuring worst-case time complexity of O(n log n). For small arrays, it uses insertion sort for efficiency. This adaptive approach makes Introsort both fast and reliable, widely used in standard libraries like C++'s STL.