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In its historical original meaning, a cartoon is a full-size drawing made on paper as a study for a further artwork, such as a painting. However, cartoons were typically used in the production of frescoes in order to accurately link the component parts of the composition when painted onto newly applied fresh plaster over a series of days. Cartoons by painters such as Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci are highly prized in their own right.

A stereotypical mad scientist cartoon

Nowadays a cartoon is a humorous drawing of some description. This usage dates from the 1840s when Punch magazine applied the terms to satirical drawings in its pages. The first of these parodied frescoes in the then-new Palace of Westminster. The original title for such drawings in Punch was Mr Punch's pencillings and the title 'cartoon' was intended to be ironic - these were still essentially line-art drawings in pencil and/or ink.

Over time, more cartoons in Punch made other satirical points and, eventually, came merely to be humorous drawings, usually (although not always) with a punchline caption at the bottom. Many early examples of these are reproduced on the Punch website and are impenetrably obscure by today's standards.

The modern understanding of cartoon falls into two further categories - comic strip and animated cartoons.

Comic strips are found daily in newspapers worldwide and are frequently compiled into books. Comic strips are either individual drawings or a series of (usually) three drawings side-by-side. Each square of a strip is referred to as a 'cell'. Cartoons in this sense include Peanuts, drawn by Charles Schulz, GarfieldGarfield is the popular comic strip created by Jim Davis featuring the people food eating feline character named Garfield, the less than brilliant pet dog Odie, and their socially inept owner Jon Arbuckle. The character is named after Davis's grandfather,, by Jim DavisOdie on the left and Garfield on the right Jim Davis (born July 28, 1945), is an American cartoonist who created the popular comic strip Garfield in 1978; Garfield is now one of the most popular cartoon characters in the world. Davis was born in Marion, I, or DilbertDilbert is a popular American comic strip. Written by Scott Adams, the comic is known for its heavily satirical humor about a micromanaged office, featuring a software engineer as the title character and his clueless boss. The strip has run in newspapers by Scott AdamsThis article is about the cartoonist; another Scott Adams is a game designer. Scott Adams (born June 8, 1957) is the creator of the Dilbert comic strip and the author of several business commentaries, social satires, and experimental philosophy books., although there are literally hundreds of others. Some comic strips retain a satirical and even literary edge, such DoonesburyDoonesbury is a comic strip by Garry Trudeau, popular in the United States. The title comes from the name of one of the main characters, Michael Doonesbury, a character Trudeau originally modeled after himself. The character's name is a combination of the by Garry TrudeauGarretson Beekman Trudeau (born July 21, 1948) is an American cartoonist. He attended St. Paul's School and then Yale University in the late 1960s, where he developed his most famous creation, the daily comic strip Doonesbury. Doonesbury is syndicated to. Additionally, graphic novels tie cartoon-like illustrations to a novel-like plot and word-count.

Animated cartoons are usually shown on television or cinema screens and are created by drawing thousands of individual drawings which are shown rapidly in succession to give the impression of movement. In this meaning, the word cartoon is often shortened to toon, which may be a corruption of Looney Tunes. Toon was popularized in the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. Toons are often anthropomorphized animals used in non-serious fiction. It is not generally used to in reference to anime characters. A major distinction between the two is the squash and stretch mannerism of American cartoon characters.