# Cartoons

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cartoons/8909>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 20, 2000, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cartoons/8909 "2000-03-20T22:06:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![allanadale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecccb3/32.png) [@allanadale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/allanadale)\
**Post date:** [March 20, 2000, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cartoons/8909/1 "2000-03-20T22:06:00Z")

</div>

Perhaps someone asked this already, but I searched the archive and didn’t see it:

What is the origin of the word “cartoon?”

* * *

“Enter any 11-digit prime number to continue…” Anon.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Ursa\_Major](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/a88e57/32.png) [@Ursa\_Major](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ursa_Major)\
**Post date:** [March 20, 2000, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cartoons/8909/2 "2000-03-20T22:17:00Z")

</div>

I think it’s an Italian word meaning a drawing on paper.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Guy\_Propski](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/5e9695/32.png) [@Guy\_Propski](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guy_Propski)\
**Post date:** [March 20, 2000, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cartoons/8909/3 "2000-03-20T23:10:00Z")

</div>

It’s derived from the Italian word cartone, meaning pasteboard. It has several meanings, but the one we’re most used to is “a drawing depicting a humorous situation, ofetn accompanied by a caption.”

When early filmmakers began making motion pictures of series of drawings which seemed to move, they called them “animated cartoons.” Lazy filmgoers dropped the “animated” and just called them cartoons. Even lazier animation lovers of the 90’s shortened it to 'toons.

* * *

It’s my duty; my duty as a complete and utter bastard.–Arnold J. Rimmer.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Kat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b19c9b/32.png) [@Kat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kat)\
**Post date:** [March 21, 2000, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cartoons/8909/4 "2000-03-21T00:30:00Z")

</div>

Here’s some more detail for you:  
**cartoon** _Cartoon_ comes via French _carton_ from Italian _cartone_, which means literally ‘strong heavy paper, pasteboard’ (it was a derivative of _carta_ ‘paper,’ which came from latin _charta_, source also of English _card, carton, chart,_ and _charter_). Its meaning was in due course transferred to the preliminary sketches made by artists on such paper, the original and for nearly two centuries the only sense of the word in English: ‘But the sight best pleased me was the cartoons by Raphael, which are far beyond all the painting I ever saw,’ Hatton family correspondence, 1697. Its application to comic drawings in newspapers and magazines began in the 1840s. (_Dictionary of Word Origins_, John Ayto)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![allanadale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecccb3/32.png) [@allanadale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/allanadale)\
**Post date:** [March 21, 2000, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cartoons/8909/5 "2000-03-21T04:57:00Z")

</div>

Hmmm!

Well, thank you very much! Now I can go impress my Visual Literacy teacher with my newfound intelligence.

Ah…college…