English

Alternative forms

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

Preposition

onto

1. Upon; on top of.
   • 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.

   My cat just jumped onto the keyboard.‎

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.‎

Translations

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

See also

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

Translations

See also

• unto

Anagrams

• noot, toon, Toon