prototypical

[ proh-tuh-tip-i-kuhl ]

adjective

1. being the original or model on which something is based or formed:

   Even Los Angeles, the prototypical American automobile city, is rapidly expanding its public transit infrastructure.

2. illustrating the typical qualities of a class or group:

   Scotty played center field as a quick, prototypical lead-off hitter.

   The International Harvester Farmall letter series, well-built and affordable, became an iconic symbol of the prototypical American small-farm tractor.

3. Biology. being a primitive form regarded as the basis of a group; archetypal:

   She graduated with a degree in biology, having conducted her senior thesis research on virulence factors of vaccinia, the prototypical poxvirus.

Other Words From

• pro·to·typ·i·cal·ly adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of prototypical¹

prototyp(e) ( def ) + -ical ( def )

Example Sentences

The prototypical TV docudrama is a salacious, slapdash affair—a ’90s Lifetime movie, maybe, about a famous woman’s scandalous life.

From Time

For GameStop, the prototypical “meme stock” on Wall Street, the new attention and cash meant it faced pressure to reveal how it planned to update its business to compete in a digital economy.

From Quartz

The decline of Salesforce, Adobe and Oracle’s prototypical data management solutions bear this out.

From Digiday

The nautilus is the prototypical animal in the Mesophotic Zone.

From Nautilus

At 6 foot 5 and 215 pounds, Glass is the size of a prototypical NFL quarterback and is considered a sleeper ahead of the 2022 draft.

From Ozy

Feminist pioneer Marlo Thomas, who played the perky and prototypical good girl Ann Marie on That Girl, wants you to be yourself.

From The Daily Beast

They were almost the prototypical Republican voters: Older, white, professional, and highly civically engaged.

From The Daily Beast

Here we meet a prototypical Balzac character: the gifted, flawed, striving provincial Eugène de Rastignac.

From The Daily Beast

Her daughter, my grandmother, was a prototypical 50s housewife and a woman of amazing talents.

From The Daily Beast

The prototypical example of this is the U.S. posture along the DMZ between South Korea and North Korea.

From The Daily Beast

There is a prototypical plan, an ideal pattern, which imposes a precise position upon each atom of the tissue.

From Project Gutenberg

Under the expectations of literacy, a prototypical family life was to be expected from all.

From Project Gutenberg

As the prototypical example of land-art, this lattice of lightning rods covers an area of one mile by one kilometer.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• archetypal
• quintessential