A higher kinded type is simply an abstraction over types. The examples on this page use the scala language.

A proper type is something such as String. You can only instantiate values of proper types directly. These are represented as kind *.

val str: String = "seven"

In the above snippet, a String can simply be instantiated. No bells, whistles or hoops. (Some proper types cannot be instantiated, these are usually abstract types.)

On the other hand, a higher kinded type is a type which needs another type provided to it in order to create a proper type. It is a type constructor. Values cannot be instantiated for types of these kinds. These have myriad kind representations, the simplest of which is kind * -> *. Which says given a type of kind *, you get a type of kind *. List is a common example.

var list: List = List()//compile error
var list: List[String] = List("sev", "en")

In the above example a List cannot simply be instantiated. It must be provided with a proper type before the compiler can reason about it.

An extension of this is that a type like Map, which takes two type parameters, is kinded * -> * -> *. This says given two types of kind * a type of kind * is produced (currying for types).

Furthermore, a type like Monad[F] is of kind (* -> *) -> * which implies given a type of kind * -> * a type of kind * is produced.