onto

See also: ónto, ontó, öntő, on to, onto-, and -onto

English

Alternative forms

• on to (UK, Ireland and Commonwealth countries including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa etc)

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• (stressed)
  • (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈɒn.tuː/

    • Audio (Southern England)

      (file)

  • (US) IPA^(key): /ˈɔn.tu/
  • (cot–caught merger) IPA^(key): /ˈɑn.tu/
• (UK) (unstressed, before consonants) IPA^(key): /ˈɒn.tə/
  • (US) (unstressed, before consonants) IPA^(key): /ˈɔn.tə/
  • (cot–caught merger) (unstressed, before consonants) IPA^(key): /ˈɑn.tə/
• (UK) (unstressed, before vowels) IPA^(key): /ˈɒn.tʊ/
  • (US) (unstressed, before vowels) IPA^(key): /ˈɔn.tʊ/
  • (cot–caught merger) (unstressed, before vowels) IPA^(key): /ˈɑn.tʊ/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Hyphenation: on‧to

• Rhymes: (unstressed, before consonants) -ɒntə

Preposition

onto

1. Arriving upon or on top of (speaking of a physical or metaphorical movement).

   My cat just jumped onto the keyboard.

   • 2013 June 22, “Engineers of a different kind”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 70:

     Private-equity nabobs bristle at being dubbed mere financiers. Piling debt onto companies’ balance-sheets is only a small part of what leveraged buy-outs are about, they insist. Improving the workings of the businesses they take over is just as core to their calling, if not more so. Much of their pleading is public-relations bluster.

2. (informal) Aware of.

   The thought-police were onto my plans of world domination.

3. (mathematics) 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.

Derived terms

• back onto
• be onto
• be onto something
• call onto the carpet
• come onto
• cotton onto
• crack onto
• get onto
• glom onto
• hang onto
• hang onto your hat
• hold onto
• hold onto your hat
• latch onto
• onto function

 

Translations

upon; on top of

• Albanian: please add this translation if you can
• Arabic: عَلَى (ar) (ʕalā)

  Egyptian Arabic: على (ʕala), عـ (ʕa)

• Bulgarian: върху (bg) (vǎrhu), на (bg) (na)
• Czech: please add this translation if you can
• Danish: please add this translation if you can
• Dutch: please add this translation if you can
• Esperanto: sur (eo) (with -n)
• Estonian: please add this translation if you can
• Faroese: please add this translation if you can
• Finnish: -lle (fi) (allative case); (+ genitive) päälle (fi)
• French: sur (fr)
• German: auf (de)
• Gothic: 𐌰𐌽𐌰 (ana) (+ accusative)
• Greek:

  Ancient: ἐπί (epí) (+ accusative)

• Hebrew: על (he) (al)
• Hungarian: please add this translation if you can
• Icelandic: ofan á, á (is)
• Ido: adsur (io)
• Igbo: please add this translation if you can
• Indonesian: please add this translation if you can
• Irish: ar
• Italian: su (it)
• Kurdish:

  Northern Kurdish: ser (ku)

• Ladin: please add this translation if you can
• Ladino: please add this translation if you can
• Lala-Roba: please add this translation if you can
• Latvian: please add this translation if you can
• Lithuanian: please add this translation if you can
• Maltese: please add this translation if you can
• Norwegian:

  Norwegian Bokmål: please add this translation if you can

  Norwegian Nynorsk: please add this translation if you can

• Occitan: subre (oc), sus (oc), sobre (oc)
• Polish: na (pl)
• Portuguese: sobre (pt), no (pt) m, na (pt) f
• Russian: на (ru) (na)
• Slovak: please add this translation if you can
• Slovene: please add this translation if you can
• Sorbian:

  Lower Sorbian: na

• Spanish: sobre (es)
• Swahili: please add this translation if you can
• Swedish: upp på
• Turkish: üstünde (tr), üstüne (tr)
• Veps: please add this translation if you can
• Volapük: please add this translation if you can
• Võro: please add this translation if you can
• Votic: allative case
• Welsh: ar (cy)

Adjective

onto (not comparable)

1. (mathematics, of a function) Assuming each of the values in its codomain; having its range equal to its codomain.

   Considered as a function on the real numbers, the exponential function is not onto.

Synonyms

• (mathematics): surjective

Translations

surjective — see surjective

See also

• (mathematics): one-to-one, injective, bijective

See also

• unto

Anagrams

• Noto, Toon, noot, noto-, oont, tono-, toon

Mansaka

Etymology

From untu, from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *quntu.

Noun

onto

1. tooth