- one of the first units manufactured of a product, which is tested so that the design can be changed if necessary before the product is manufactured commercially
- a person or thing that serves as an example of a type
- the ancestral or primitive form of a species or other group; an archetype
WordReference Random House Learner's Dictionary of American English © 2026
pro•to•type /ˈproʊtəˌtaɪp/USA pronunciation
n. [countable]
WordReference Random House Unabridged Dictionary of American English © 2026- the original or model on which something is based or formed, as the first working model of something to be manufactured on a large scale.
pro•to•type
(prō′tə tīp′),USA pronunciation n., v. -typed, -typ•ing.
n.
v.t.
pro′to•typ′al, pro•to•typ•i•cal
(prō′tə tip′i kəl),USA pronunciation pro′to•typ′ic, adj.
pro′to•typ′i•cal•ly, adv.
n.
- the original or model on which something is based or formed.
- someone or something that serves to illustrate the typical qualities of a class; model;
exemplar:She is the prototype of a student activist. - something analogous to another thing of a later period:a Renaissance prototype of our modern public housing.
- Biologyan archetype;
a primitive form regarded as the basis of a group.
v.t.
- to create the prototype or an experimental model of:to prototype a solar-power car.
- Greek prōtótypon, noun, nominal use of neuter of prōtótypos original. See proto-, type
- Neo-Latin prōtotypon
- 1595–1605
- 1. pattern.
Collins Concise English Dictionary © HarperCollins Publishers::
prototype /ˈprəʊtəˌtaɪp/ n
'prototype' also found in these entries (note: many are not synonyms or translations):
archetype
- archetypal
- blueprint
- Dounreay
- dummy
- homologate
- kilogram
- Melchizedek
- New Jerusalem
- Osborne
- prefiguration
- proto-
- Punchinello
- ancestor
- ancestral
- antetype
- Appleseed
- book
- Cro-Magnon
- ectype
- father
- jerry can
- Juan Fernández
- meter
- model
- mold
- Nicholas
- original
- prehuman
- protoplast
- type
- Selkirk
- Simon
- soundalike