Cartoon
/kɑːrˈtuːn/noun
A humorous drawing, an animated film, or a full-size preparatory drawing for a painting or tapestry.
The Greek roots
Literally: “big sheet of paper”
The story of the word
Italian cartone is an augmentative, a big stiff sheet, and it named the full-scale drawing an artist made before committing anything to plaster or thread. Raphael's cartoons for the Sistine tapestries are the famous survivors. The joke sense has a precise birthday: in 1843 the new Houses of Parliament ran a competition for fresco designs, and Punch printed mocking versions under the heading Mr Punch's Cartoons. A word for a careful preparatory drawing has meant a funny one ever since.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Italian → French → English
- First recorded
- 1670s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
In a sentence
He drew a cartoon of the head of department on the back of the agenda.