onto meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

onto

prep

UK /ˈɒn.tuː/ · /ˈɔn.tu/

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

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

2 more examples

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.2013 June 22, “Engineers of a different kind”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 70:
That original list of 2,315 solutions was embedded in the game’s code. That means the game was playable offline and could be downloaded onto phones or computers. The solutions to the original Wordle game were predetermined through October 20, 2027. The New York Times (NYT) hasn’t said if it plans to make any more changes or additions to that initial list.2022 February 15, David Goldman, “Why your Wordle answers might now be different than your friends’”, in CNN Business:

Informal Aware of.

Mathematics, Sciences 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: 33 terms
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

adj

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

Mathematics, Sciences 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.