Mum and experienced cook here. In standard English 'gravy' is a sauce made from meat juices. You take the juices from roasting the meat, add seasoning, and adjust the consistency to make it suitable for pouring. This is what is meant when someone says 'mashed potatoes with gravy'.
It's also possible to buy granules, cubes and so on to make instant gravy.
There are variations in which other ingredients are added, such as 'onion gravy' and 'mushroom gravy', but the basic meat-juice sauce is still the same.
The meaning is slightly different in the cuisine of the southern states of the USA. Here, 'gravy' is a thick creamy sauce, often containing pieces of meat. However, this is not what most English-speakers outside this region would understand by the term.