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To be contingent means that something doesn’t have to exist; it could be different, or it could not be at all. Contingent things need other things in order to stay in existence. For example, humans need the oxygen that plants create, the oxygen we breathe needs an atmosphere, the atmosphere requires the planet’s gravity in order to stay together, and so on. We know that humans are contingent because we can imagine a world without them. We can do the same for other contingent objects such as stars and planets.
In contrast, something is necessary when it is not contingent and so could not be different. The three sides of a triangle are necessary because it is impossible to draw a triangle with more or fewer sides. This fact can’t be different, so we say a triangle’s three sides are necessary to a triangle.
The contingency argument for the existence of God claims the universe’s existence is dependent on something that is not dependent upon anything else in order to exist. Its existence ultimately depends on a “necessary” being: God.