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The get_close_matches() function is a part of the Python's difflib module. It is used to get a list of the best "matches" for a given input string, based on a second list of "possibilities".

Here is how the get_close_matches() function operates:

1. The function takes in three arguments - a string or a word that is to be matched, a list of words or strings to check from, and an integer value n that specifies the maximum number of matched words to return.

2. The function then calculates the similarity ratio between each string in the possibility list and the input string, using the SequenceMatcher.ratio() method that is also a part of the difflib module.

3. The SequenceMatcher.ratio() method calculates the similarity between two strings as the ratio of the length of their longest common substring to the total length of the two strings.

4. The get_close_matches() function then sorts the list of possibilities in descending order based on their similarity ratio to the input string.

5. Finally, the function returns a list of up to n closest matches.

Note that the function uses a default similarity threshold of 0.6, meaning that only the strings with a similarity ratio of 0.6 or above will be returned in the list of closest matches.