A useful picture for cartoon is a drawing that is deliberately not realistic: lines simplified, a nose too big, a point made fast. Whether it sits in one box in a newspaper, runs across four boxes as a little story, or is photographed frame by frame until it moves, it is the same object underneath — hand-drawn pictures doing a job that a photograph could not do.
From the word’s history
English took cartoon in the 1670s from Italian cartone 'strong, heavy paper, pasteboard' (an augmentative of Medieval Latin carta 'paper'), meaning a drawing on that stiff paper used as a full-size plan for a painting or tapestry. The word travelled from the paper, to the humorous newspaper drawing (by 1843), to the animated film (by 1911) — so the artist's plan is the oldest sense, not a technical offshoot of the funny one.
cartoon 1670 年代進入英文時，來自義大利文 cartone「厚紙、紙板」（中世紀拉丁文 carta「紙」的加大形），指的是畫在那種硬紙上、與成品同尺寸的正式草圖。字義是從「紙」走到「報紙上的幽默畫」（約 1843 年），再走到「動畫片」（約 1911 年）。所以畫家的草圖不是從笑話畫分出來的冷門用法，反而是最老的那個意思——今天的漫畫和卡通，都是從那張大厚紙上的畫長出來的。
Online Etymology Dictionary, etymonline.com/word/cartoon
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原始詞典資料9 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
cartoonnoun/kɑːˈtuːn/
- 1
comicsliteraturemediaA humorous drawing, often with a caption, or a strip of such drawings.
- 2
comicsliteraturemediaA drawing satirising current public figures.
- The newspaper published a political cartoon mocking the mayor.
- 3
artartsAn artist's preliminary sketch.
- 4
artartsA full-sized drawing that serves as the template for a fresco, a tapestry, etc.
- 5
An animated piece of film which is often but not exclusively humorous.
- The children watched a funny cartoon on TV.
- 6
A cartoon series.
- 12 July 2012, Sam Adams, AV Club Ice Age: Continental Drift The matter of whether the world needs a fourth Ice Age movie pales beside the question of why there were three before it, but Continental Drift feels less like an extension of a theatrical franchise than an episode of a middling TV cartoon, lolling around on territory that’s already been settled.
- 7
A diagram in a scientific concept.
cartoonverb/kɑːˈtuːn/
- 1
artartscomicsTo draw a cartoon, a humorous drawing.
- 2
artartsTo make a preliminary sketch.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。