prototype

An original form or object which is a basis for other forms or objects (particularly manufactured items), or for its generalizations and models.

Near-synonym: archetype (sometimes synonymous)

And if Jordan were but Jaar Eden, that is, the Riuer of Eden, Geneſar but Ganſar or the Prince of Gardens; and it could be made out, that the Plain of Jordan were watered not comparatively, but cauſally, and becauſe it was the Paradiſe of God, as the Learned Abramas hinteth, he was not far from the Prototype and originall of Plantations.

An early sample or model built to test a concept or process.

The prototype had loose wires and rough edges, but it worked.

General Electric, under contract to the A.E.C., is now building a land-based prototype of this nuclear-power plant at West Milton, N.Y. A land-based prototype of the nuclear-power plant for the "Nautilus," developed jointly by the A.E.C.'s Argonne National Laboratory and the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, is now being built by Westinghouse, also under contract to the A.E.C.

A declaration of a function that specifies the name, return type, and parameters, but none of the body or actual code.

Like any variable in a C program it is necessary to prototype or declare a function before its use, if it returns a value other than an int. It informs the compiler that the function would be referenced at a later stage in the program. / For example, / In program 1, the statement / void display_message(); / is a function prototype or declaration. Here void specifies that this function does not return any value, and the empty parenthesis^([sic – meaning parentheses]) indicate that it takes no parameters (arguments).

An instance of a category or a concept that combines its most representative attributes.

A robin is a prototype of a bird; a penguin is not.

If the robin is the prototype of bird, do particular examples of robin constitute that prototype for different people? I think not. Rather, prototypes are themselves categories. Thus, to say that a robin is a prototypic bird is to propose that a class of similar creatures called robin is a prototype of bird.

A type of race car, a racing sports car not based on a production car. A 4-wheeled cockpit-seating car built especially for racing on sports car circuits, that does not use the silhouette related to a consumer road car.

To create a prototype of.

In short, he has purposely perverted the whole case from beginning to end, and distorted it in such a manner, as not to be prototyped except by his own mind; […]

[Y]ou may form acquaintance with the Wye before it sees the light, by penetrating that interesting cavern, Poole's Hole, as I have several times before. It is a wondrous place, and worthy of a far more dignified name; a sort of crypt in Nature's vast cathedral; an assemblage of all grotesque, fantastic and beautiful mineral formations, in a fretted vault not made by man, yet mimicking or prototyping all his art.

To imitate or emulate.