Think of $() as being a wrapper object that wraps up a lot of functionality.
I will give you an example you can run to see it work.
But this sample will be a bit simpler.
let $ = (el) => {console.log(el)};
That actually defines a function named $ that takes one parameter named el.
To run it you can pass in an element like the following:
$(document.querySelectorAll("img")[0]);
You could make $ an object that contains a bunch of other functions (basically what jQuery did).
let $ = {};
$.double = (a) => a*2;
$.multiply = (a,b) => a*b;
Now you can use it like the following:
$.double(3);
$.multiple(3,4);