What is a prototype? On the surface this is a fairly easy question, but one that when thought about terns out to be much more complex. I used to think that a prototype is like a draft, something built to show what the final product is going to be like. It uses cheaper materials, perhaps it uses plastic instead of metal, and it's a bit rougher than one might expect. Have you seen the first Iron Man movie? Of cause you have, everyone has seen that movie, it's a good movie. When Tony Stark first built his Iron Man suit in the lab (not the one in the desert, thought that, in hindsight, is also a prototype) was what I pictured a prototype to be. Something that's nearly fully formed, but is still a bit rough.
Obviously this image of what a prototype is is very limited. A prototype doesn't have to be as fully formed as that, it doesn't even have to have physical form. It is basically anything which a person can use to test an idea. It can be telling someone about the idea over coffee, all you need to do is have it testable - and all you need to test an idea is to ask someone what they think (in the coffee scenario).
You can also test an idea by building something, testing the physical thing that you've built. You could build a car and test it by driving it around and making sure the physical components don't explode, you could test a cat toy by creating something and giving it to a cat and watching as the cat completely fails to cooperate, you can test a website by scribbling it on bits of paper and having someone pretend to use it as though it were real.
Anyway, that's what I think a prototype is: something testable. A terribly broad definition, but there it is.
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