Onto

How to spell onto

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce onto

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does onto mean?

1. prepositionTo a position on the surface or top of something.

Onto in a sentence

• The cat jumped onto the kitchen counter.

• She lifted the heavy box onto the shelf.

Where does onto come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Onto is a compound that simply welds together the two old English prepositions 'on' and 'to', both of which descend from Germanic roots that English has used since Anglo-Saxon times. The pattern mirrors the much older 'into', which fused 'in' and 'to' centuries earlier, but onto is surprisingly recent: writers did not regularly join the two words until the 1700s, and even then many style guides resisted it. The lingering memory of the words as separate is exactly why people still hesitate over whether to write 'onto' or 'on to'. The modern rule is that the single word signals movement to a position on top of something, while the two-word 'on to' keeps 'on' attached to a preceding verb, as in 'carry on to the next page'. Because both forms remain correct in different uses, the spelling trap is choosing the fused word only when it truly means 'to a place upon'.

How the word is built

• on (preposition of position)
• to (directional preposition), fused into a single word