Also called: utility command, ProcessUtility, DDL command
In plain English
A utility statement is any command that is not a planned query — CREATE TABLE, ALTER, VACUUM, SET, GRANT. Instead of going through the planner">optimizer and executor, these run directly through a dispatcher called ProcessUtility.
Why it matters
It is why EXPLAIN CREATE TABLE is meaningless — there is no plan to show. The performance of DDL is a question of locking and execution, not of optimization, which changes how you reason about it entirely.