Indeed, as Mike already mentioned, Windows OS Functions are also called an API, it's an atypical API, but when you look into the IntelliSense tip coming up when you write DECLARE in a code window you'll see the keyword WIN32API.
If you look at it from the right perspective the base principle is the same as with all APIs - they provide functionalities related to something. Today often related to a website, in a form that
a) offers more or less the same functionality as the site itself - the similarity of Windows here is the WIN32API offers functions about windows, from such basic tasks as allocating RAM memory to listing Drives.
b) offers data in a more raw form than the way it's embedded in the human-readable form a browser renders from HTML - the similarity of Windows here is that an end-user finds a list of drives in the Windows Explorer, but when you RUN /N explorer.exe from VFP (which works this way) you wouldn't want to make a Screenshot of the Window and then use OCR (optical character recognition) to get the list of drives and partitions. Instead you make a call of GetLogicalDrives.
c) often is limited to a certain number of requests and requires you to register as an API user - which has no correspondence in Windows. The Win32API is free, you alreeady paid for it by buying Windows. MS earns from it as this enables programmers to concentrate on the core of your application functionalities without needing to get down to low level functions. Even though allocating RAM is an example of such a low level task of a program.
Chriss