onto

English · Thesaurus

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onto

  • /ˈɒn.tuː/ UK, stressed
  • /ˈɑn.tu/ Northern US, cot caught merger, stressed
  • /ˈɔn.tu/ stressed
  • /ˈɔn.tʉ/ Northern Ireland, Scotland, stressed
  • /ˈɒn.tə/ UK, unstressed
  • /ˈɑn.tə/ Northern US, cot caught merger, unstressed
  • /ˈɔn.tə/ unstressed
  • /ˈɔn.tə/ Northern Ireland, Scotland, unstressed
  • /ˈɒn.tʊ/ UK, before vowel, unstressed
  • /ˈɑn.tʊ/ Northern US, before vowel, cot caught merger
  • /ˈɔn.tʊ/ before vowel, unstressed
  • /ˈɔn.tʉ/ Northern Ireland, Scotland, before vowel

Rhymes with (unstressed, before consonants) -ɒntə

Where it comes from

From on + to, after into. Compare Saterland Frisian antou (“up to”).

preposition on to

  1. Arriving upon or on top of (speaking of a physical or metaphorical movement). My cat just jumped onto the keyboard.

    Opposite: off, off of

  2. informal Aware of. The thought-police were onto my plans of world domination.
  3. Being an onto function with a codomain of (see below). The exponential function maps the set of real numbers onto the set of positive real numbers.

adjective on to

  1. not comparable, of a function Attaining each of the values in its codomain; having its image equal to its codomain. Considered as a function on the real numbers, the exponential function is not onto, as it never takes on values less than or equal to zero.

    Similar: surjective

Thesaurus

Closest in meaning: preposition, for, south, with, into, after, within, about, knowing, towards, regarding, wise, atop, over, aware, toward

Translations

Every language

prep upon; on top of

Españolsobre
Portuguêssobre, no, na
Françaissur
Deutschauf
Italianosu
Русскийна na
العربيةعَلَى ʕalā
עבריתעל al

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MLA

"onto." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/onto. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

APA

onto. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/onto

Chicago

"onto." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/onto.

BibTeX
@misc{onto_2026,
  title = {onto},
  howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://micwyn.com/word/onto},
  urldate = {2026-11-06}
}