Meanings
plural webtoons
- InternetAn animated cartoon published on the World Wide Web.
Have a webtoon! Elf Life: http://www.elflife.com
2001, 11 September, "Rob Cruickshank, part-time human being", Re: Strange ad copy of the day (on newsgroup alt.slack)4 more examples
As Flash Webtoons and animated shorts have become more and more popular, a spate of tools have cropped up to facilitate their creation.
2006, Ethan Watrall, Norbert Herber, Flash MX 2004 Savvy, page 12Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi used Flash animation to bring cartoons (sometimes called online cartoons or webtoons) to the Internet.
2008, Don Rauf, Monique Vescia, Virtual Apprentice: Cartoon Animator, page 29More and more cartoons are made using special techniques with a lot of help from computers. Some people are making cartoons for the internet. These are called webtoons. You could make a webtoon, too.
2009, Caroline Nixon, Michael Tomlinson, Kid's Box 5 Pupil's Book: Book 5When it comes to Flash animated cartoons, also called webtoons, the first noted use was in 1999 when Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi set out to bring cartoons to the Web. Soon after, webtoons began popping up everywhere.
2010, Michael Duggan, PSP Game Creation for Teens, page 13 - A kind of Korean comic that is published digitally for reading on a smartphone or computer.
We can read a webtoon using an application on our phone.
2018, WESTECH 2018: Proceedings of 1st Workshop on Environmental Science, Society, and Technology, WESTECH 2018, December 8th, 2018, Medan, Indonesia, page 1662 more examples
Now producing a branded webtoon and adding a webtoon platform to a company's overall promotional branding strategy makes it look in-step with the times and popular culture.
2021, Brian Yecies, Ae-Gyung Shim, South Korea's Webtooniverse and the Digital Comic Revolution, page 155Easy access is another positive trait of webtoons—facile because of the elimination of distribution hassles, […]
2022, John A. Lent, Wendy Siuyi Wong, Benjamin Wai–ming Ng, Transnationalism in East and Southeast Asian Comics Art, page 104
Origin
- Korean웹툰
- Englishwebtoon
From Web + toon, dating from at least 2001 (see citations). For Korean comics, likely a re-borrowing of Korean 웹툰 (weptun), itself from the original sense.
More words from Korean
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Indonesian webtun
- webtunTranslations
Japanese ウェブトゥーン
- ウェブトゥーン (webutūn)Translations
Korean 웹툰
- 웹툰 (weptun)Translations
Cite this entry
webtoon. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/webtoon
“webtoon.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/webtoon. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “webtoon,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/webtoon.
Source: webtoon on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.