JavaScript OR (||) variable assignment explanation

See short-circuit evaluation for the explanation. It's a common way of implementing these operators; it is not unique to JavaScript.

This is made to assign a default value, in this case the value of y, if the x variable is falsy.

The boolean operators in JavaScript can return an operand, and not always a boolean result as in other languages.

The Logical OR operator (||) returns the value of its second operand, if the first one is falsy, otherwise the value of the first operand is returned.

For example:

"foo" || "bar"; // returns "foo"
false || "bar"; // returns "bar"

Falsy values are those who coerce to false when used in boolean context, and they are 0, null, undefined, an empty string, NaN and of course false.