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Onto vs Towards - What's the difference?

onto | towards |

As adjectives the difference between onto and towards

is that onto is oily, greasy while towards is (obsolete) near; at hand; in state of preparation; toward.

As a noun onto

is grease.

As a preposition towards is

variant of toward.

As an adverb towards is

(obsolete) in the direction of something (indicated by context).

onto

English

Alternative forms

* on to

Preposition

(English prepositions)
  • Upon; on top of.
  • *{{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-22, volume=407, issue=8841, page=70, magazine=(The Economist)
    • , title= Engineers of a different kind , passage=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.}}
  • (informal) Aware of.
  • (mathematics) Being an onto function with a codomain of (see below).

    • Adjective

    (-)
  • (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

    Anagrams

    *

    towards

    English

    Preposition

    (en-prep) (mainly in British English )
  • Variant of toward.
  • * 1835 , Sir , Sir (James Clark Ross), Narrative of a Second Voyage in Search of a North-west Passage …, Volume 1 , pp.284-5
    • Towards the following morning, the thermometer fell to 5°; and at daylight, there was not an atom of water to be seen in any direction.
  • * {{quote-news, year=2011, date=October 1, author=Phil McNulty, work=BBC Sport
    • , title= Everton 0-2 Liverpool , passage=But with Goodison Park openly directing its full hostility towards Atkinson, Liverpool went ahead when Carroll turned in his first Premier League goal of the season after 70 minutes.}}

    Synonyms

    * toward

    Usage notes

    * Although some have tried to discern a semantic distinction between the words (term) and (towards), the difference is merely dialectal. (term) is the most common form, while (toward) tends to appear only in American English.

    See also

    * See

    Adverb

    (en adverb)
  • (obsolete) In the direction of something (indicated by context).
  • * 1590 , Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene , II.iv:
    • Thus as he spake, lo far away they spyde / A varlet running towards hastily [...].

    Adjective

    (-)
  • (obsolete) Near; at hand; in state of preparation; toward.
  • * Shakespeare
    • We have a trifling foolish banquet / Towards .

    Statistics

    * English prepositions