Toon
Toon is a contraction of "cartoon", probably popularized by the name of the Looney Tunes series of animated shorts by Warner Brothers (though the spelling is different). It became a popular way to refer to a cartoon character in the 1981 Gary K. Wolf novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit and its film adaption Who Framed Roger Rabbit. These two works created and established the Toon Noir sub-genre, which features toons and non-toon humans living together, each playing by their own set of physics. The small sub-genre includes Disney's Bonkers and Warner Brothers' Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs and Freakazoid cartoon series, and more recently, the films Space Jam (1996), The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (2000) and (2003).
Toon is often used by animation fans to distinguish chaarcters from those in Japanese anime, even if the later features comedic funny animal type characters (e.g., Doraemon).
Toon is a Role Playing Game in which the players take the parts of cartoon characters. It is published by Steve Jackson Games.
The term toon occurs in the books Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card, and is short for platoon, a section of an army in Battle School that is usually comprised of ten children. However, in Ender's army, there are five toons and one pseudo-toon, which was Bean's.
"Toon" is Canadian slang for their two-dollar coin.
"Toon" is often used in MMORPGs to refer to a player's digital avatar. In this usage, it is a contraction of cartoon.
In the North Eastern dialect of English, "Toon" is used to refer to the city of Newcastle ("toon" being how "town" is pronounced in the local accent); the supporters of local football team Newcastle United are nicknamed the "Toon Army".
