Into

How to spell into

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce into

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does into mean?

1. prepositionExpressing movement or action that results in something being inside, enclosed by, or in contact with another thing.

Into in a sentence

• She poured the coffee into a tall mug.

• The car skidded into the barrier on the wet road.

Where does into come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is a native English compound, formed simply by joining 'in' and 'to', both of which come from Old English. The Old English 'in' meant 'within' or 'inside', while 'to' marked direction or motion toward something, so the merged form naturally came to express movement that ends up inside or against something. It was written as two separate words for centuries before settling into the single closed-up spelling we use today. The fusion happened because the pairing was so common that speakers stopped hearing a gap between the two parts. The chief trap for writers is exactly this history: the spaced phrase 'in to' still exists for cases where 'in' belongs to a verb and 'to' begins an infinitive, so the closed 'into' and the open 'in to' are easy to confuse.

How the word is built

• in- (toward the inside)
• to (motion/direction); a fused compound of the two everyday words