An OAV is an anime that was first made available through physical copies, that is, on discs, DVDs, Blu-rays, as opposed to having first aired on TV. The term stands for "Original Animation Video."
It's literally the same thing as OVA, Original Video Animation. The term OVA is more common than OAV, specially in Japan, probably because "AV" without the "O" normally means "adult video"—i.e. a "pornographic video"—in Japanese.
See the article about OVA for details.
Source: japanesewithanime.com (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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