What is the SYNCHRONIZE File Access Right?

When dealing with Windows NTFS file system permissions, one quickly encounters the SYNCHRONIZE access right, the purpose of which may not be obvious. SYNCHRONIZE belongs to the standard access rights, just like DELETE, READ_CONTROL, WRITE_DAC and WRITE_OWNER.

Here is the definition of SYNCHRONIZE from MSDN (2010):

The SYNCHRONIZE access right is defined within the standard access rights list as the right to specify a file handle in one of the wait functions.

Here is the newer definition of SYNCHRONIZE from Microsoft Docs (2019):

The right to use the object for synchronization. This enables a thread to wait until the object is in the signaled state. Some object types do not support this access right.