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a sketch or drawing, usually humorous, as in a newspaper or periodical, symbolizing, satirizing, or caricaturing some action, subject, or person of popular interest.
comic strip.
animated cartoon.
Fine Arts. a full-scale design for a picture, ornamental motif or pattern, or the like, to be transferred to a fresco, tapestry, etc.
resembling a cartoon or caricature:
The novel is full of predictable, cartoon characters, never believable as real people.
to represent by a cartoon.
to draw cartoons.
Contemporary Examples

What then of the cartoon and of the complaints it generated?
A 10-Point Guide To Anti-Semitism And Its Perception Mark Gardner February 13, 2013

We make the movie as a cartoon, and some actors like to see that.
Wes Anderson Takes Us Inside ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel,’ His Most Exquisite Film Marlow Stern March 3, 2014

Let people remember what you said, not how you looked while holding a graphic that resembles something from a cartoon.
Bibi Kills It… And Then Pulls Out Charts Justin Green September 26, 2012

So, we have a cartoon that is viciously anti-Netanyahu and shocked many British Jews.
A 10-Point Guide To Anti-Semitism And Its Perception Mark Gardner February 13, 2013

I felt optimistic enough to mail my agent the cartoon below soon after returning from Wyoming.
A Mathematically Impossible Novel: Manil Suri Explains “The City of Devi” Manil Suri March 14, 2013

Historical Examples

As to technique, Schwind was a child of the cartoon era; as regards tenderness of feeling, he is a modern.
The History of Modern Painting, Volume 1 (of 4) Richard Muther

Nay, nay, the cartoon of the Congress shall bring itself to pass.
Dreamers of the Ghetto I. Zangwill

First he looked at the cartoon on the front page, and then at the grotesque drawings on the back sheet comic section.
A Son of the City Herman Gastrell Seely

Since his arrival here he has only made a sketch in a cartoon.
Six Centuries of Painting Randall Davies

But that first cartoon in the schoolboy’s periodical was always before him.
The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 Various

noun
a humorous or satirical drawing, esp one in a newspaper or magazine, concerning a topical event
Also called comic strip. a sequence of drawings in a newspaper, magazine, etc, relating a comic or adventurous situation
See animated cartoon
a full-size preparatory sketch for a fresco, tapestry, mosaic, etc, from which the final work is traced or copied
n.

1670s, “a drawing on strong paper (used as a model for another work),” from French carton, from Italian cartone “strong, heavy paper, pasteboard,” thus “preliminary sketches made by artists on such paper” (see carton). Extension to comical drawings in newspapers and magazines is 1843.

Punch has the benevolence to announce, that in an early number of his ensuing Volume he will astonish the Parliamentary Committee by the publication of several exquisite designs, to be called Punch’s Cartoons! [“Punch,” June 24, 1843]

Also see -oon.

v.

1864 (implied in cartooned), from cartoon (n.). Related: Cartooning.