Word.ws English Dictionary

cartooney

cartooney noun: an empty and comically overstated threat of legal action, or a mock legal action. Also the misspelling of cartoony.

Noun

cartooney (plural cartoonies or cartooneys)

  1. (Internet) An empty and comically overstated threat of legal action, or a mock legal action.
    • Because we who don’t like spam need a good laugh once in a while (other than the occasional guffaws induced by cartooneys), let me share a few samples from my incoming spam cesspool.2004, Danny Goodman, “Rule #3: Spammers Are Stupid”, in Spam Wars: Our Last Best Chance to Defeat Spammers, Scammers, and Hackers, SelectBooks, Inc., →ISBN, page 183

Also used as

cartooney is also the misspelling of cartoony.

Forms of cartooney

pluralcartoonies
pluralcartooneys
alternative formcart00ney

Origin of cartooney

Blend of cartoon + attorney, or a variation of cartoony.

Questions about cartooney

What does cartooney mean?
Cartooney means an empty and comically overstated threat of legal action, or a mock legal action.
What part of speech is cartooney?
Cartooney is a noun.
What is the plural of cartooney?
The plural of cartooney is cartoonies.

Words near cartooney in the dictionary

  1. cartooned
  2. cartooner
  3. cartooners
  4. cartoonery
  5. cartoonesque
  6. cartooney
  7. cartooneys
  8. cartoonies
  9. cartoonification
  10. cartoonified
  11. cartoonifies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cartooney (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-cartooney.ogg.

Cite this entry: “cartooney.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cartooney. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.