I read a book about DI that always talks about DI infrastructures "instantiating an object graph." Why say so, and not "create objects"?
An object graph consists of objects containing links to each other. Another name for the graph in this context is the network.
The IOC system would not be very useful if you forgot to establish links between objects! This is how objects automatically receive links to other objects that they need, this is the whole value of the IOC system.
The term "graph of objects" means that you have a set of objects that will be created at the same time. Using this term can help distinguish between the Injection Dependency pattern (where you usually refer only to the DI infrastructure in one place) and the Service Locator pattern (where you will use it to create / access objects in several places throughout your application).
A graph is a collection of interconnected objects. Thus, its creation can be an instance of several separate objects.
To distinguish the creation of one object from the creation of a set of objects, we use the term "object graph". This helps inform the scope of the Resolve operation.
Resolve