onto
Syllables: on·to/ˈɒn.tuː/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
Northern US/ˈɑn.tu/
onto preposition: arriving upon or on top of (speaking of a physical or metaphorical movement).
Preposition
onto
- Arriving upon or on top of (speaking of a physical or metaphorical movement).
- My cat just jumped onto the keyboard.
- A new drug has just come onto the market.
- Aware of.
- The thought-police were onto my plans of world domination.
- 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
onto (not comparable)
- 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.
- Synonyms:
- surjective
onto meaning in Arabic
onto in Arabic
- upon; on top of
- عَلَى ʕalā
Examples of onto in a sentence
- Piling debt onto companies’ balance-sheets is only a small part of what leveraged buy-outs are about, they insist.2013 June 22, “Engineers of a different kind”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 70:
- That means the game was playable offline and could be downloaded onto phones or computers.2022 February 15, David Goldman, “Why your Wordle answers might now be different than your friends’”, in CNN Business:
Synonyms of onto
Antonyms
Forms of onto
| alternative Australia Canada Commonwealth Ireland New Zealand South Africa UK including usually | on to |
|---|
Origin of onto
From on + to, after into. Compare Saterland Frisian antou (“up to”).
Words formed from onto
- back onto
- be onto
- be onto nothing
- be onto something
- call onto the carpet
- clock onto
- come onto
- cop onto
- cotton onto
- crack onto
- freeze onto
- get one's fingers onto
- get onto
- glomb onto
- glom onto
- glomp onto
- hang onto
- hang onto your hat
- hold onto
- hold onto your hat
- jump onto
- latch onto
- log onto
- map onto
- mitten onto
- onto function
- put onto
- set onto
- sign onto
- stumble onto
- thereonto
- whereonto
- wig onto
Phrases with onto
- is onto
- got onto
- was onto
- been onto
- came onto
- cops onto
- gets onto
- held onto
- hung onto
- logs onto
- maps onto
- puts onto
61 more phrasesFewer phrases
- sets onto
- wigs onto
- backs onto
- comes onto
- froze onto
- gloms onto
- hangs onto
- holds onto
- jumps onto
- signs onto
- backed onto
- clocks onto
- coming onto
- copped onto
- cracks onto
- frozen onto
- glombs onto
- glomps onto
- gotten onto
- jumped onto
- logged onto
- mapped onto
- signed onto
- wigged onto
- backing onto
- clocked onto
- copping onto
- cottons onto
- cracked onto
- freezes onto
- getting onto
- glombed onto
- glommed onto
- glomped onto
- hanging onto
- holding onto
- jumping onto
- latched onto
- latches onto
- logging onto
- mapping onto
- putting onto
- setting onto
- signing onto
- wigging onto
- clocking onto
- cottoned onto
- cracking onto
- freezing onto
- glombing onto
- glomming onto
- glomping onto
- latching onto
- stumbled onto
- stumbles onto
- cottoning onto
- onto functions
- stumbling onto
- calls onto the carpet
- called onto the carpet
- calling onto the carpet
Questions about onto
- What does onto mean?
- Onto means arriving upon or on top of (speaking of a physical or metaphorical movement).
- What is onto in Arabic?
- Onto in Arabic is عَلَى (ʕalā). See Onto meaning in Arabic.
- How do you use onto in a sentence?
- Piling debt onto companies’ balance-sheets is only a small part of what leveraged buy-outs are about, they insist.
- What part of speech is onto?
- Onto can be a preposition or an adjective.
- How do you pronounce onto?
- Onto is pronounced /ˈɒn.tuː/ (UK).
Words near onto in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: onto (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-onto.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-onto.wav.
Cite this entry: “onto.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/onto. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.