| 释义 |
on to, onto, prep. and a.|ˈɒntuː|
[The adv. on + the prep. to, used to express the notion conveyed in OE. by on prep. with the accusative, and often in ME. and mod.Eng. by on with simple objective (on prep. B.), so as to remove the ambiguity of on, upon, after certain verbs, e.g. ‘to jump on deck’. On to thus has the same relation to on that into has to in. But while in to, into, was in use already by 900, the need for on to, onto appears not to have been felt before the 16th c., while its written recognition as a combination is still quite recent and limited. Yet, in the sense in which it corresponds to into, onto is in speech a real compound, the n being shortened by its rapid passage into the allied mute t, while in on to, as two words, the n is long and does not glide into the t. But by most writers on to is avoided, or used only when ambiguity cannot be otherwise avoided (cf. quots. 1777, 1837, 1863, 1870, 1873, 1881).
On to, onto, in this sense, must be carefully distinguished, first, from a ME. onto, a frequent scribal variant of unto; and, secondly, from modern instances in which on, as the extension of a vb., is followed by to as a separate word, e.g. to walk on to the next station, to flow on to the sea, to hang on to a party, to lead on to another point; a ship lies broadside on to the waves. Here the two words are no more connected than in up to, down to, out to, away to, back to, home to. Some who write or print onto have carelessly misused it in such connexions.]
A. prep.
1. To a position on or upon (or one that is expressed by these preps.). (α) Written on to.
1581Rich Farew. (1846) 7, I haue stept on to the stage..contented to plaie a part. 1677W. Hubbard Narrative (1865) I. 227 Another mortally wounded, got on to an Island in the River. c1681Hickeringill Trimmer ii. Wks. 1716 I. 367 Now that I have got you on to my own ground. 1777–8C. A. Burney in Mme. D'Arblay's Early Diary (1889) II. 287 Mr. Suard tumbled on to the sopha directly, Mr. Thrale on to a chair. 1778M. Cutler in Life, Jrnls. & Corr. (1888) I. 66 This morning I crossed on to Rhode Island. 1837Dickens Pickw. ii, Assisting Mr. Pickwick on to the roof. 1863Geo. Eliot Romola lxviii, She jumped on to the beach. 1864G. W. Dasent Jest & Earnest (1873) I. 75 They are..slowly lowered, not right on to the heads of the slumbering gannets, but a little on one side. 1870H. Maudsley Body & Mind 13 If laid on its back, it struggles on to its legs again. 1871Morley Crit. Misc. 219 His epithet..shoots like a sunbeam on to the matter. 1871L. Stephen Playgr. Eur. 309 Dropping on to your knees on an ice staircase. 1873Miss Thackeray Wks. (1891) I. 70 Jumped out of window on to the water⁓butt. 1881Tennyson Cup ii. ii. stage direct., Comes forward on to step by tripod. 1888Mrs. H. Ward R. Elsmere xviii. II. 105 He subsided on to the music-bench obediently. 1895Law Times Rep. LXXIII. 156/2 Two vessels..drifted through the violence of a storm on to the toe of a breakwater.
(β) Written onto.
(Several early instances of this cited by Pickering, Bartlett, etc., have on examination proved to be erroneous, the originals having on to, in two words.)
1715Duxbury (Mass.) Rec. (1893) 105 [A] place gutted away by the rain down onto Mr. Wiswells land. 1758R. Putnam Jrnl. 3 June (1886) 62 Capt. Nixon's men..fell a tree onto some men as they were in another camp. 1788J. May Jrnl. 30 June (1873) 75, I put powder-horn and shot-bag onto him, and a gun in his hand. 1819Keats Otho v. iv. (Poems, ed. Forman 1901), Please you walk forth Onto [ed. 1876 Upon] the Terrace. a1825Forby Voc. E. Anglia Introd. 155 For the preposition upon, when it signifies motion to, we use onto (why not as good as into?). Ex. ‘Throw some coals onto the fire’. 1828Craven Gloss. (ed. 2), Onto, upon, on. ‘Put it ontot' table’. 1846in Worcester. 1881B. Waugh Sunday Even. w. my Childr. xxxix. 332 A steamer..was reported to be driven onto the rocks. Ibid., On the cliff there were men trying to send a rope out onto the ship. 1886C. W. Stone Grk. Lessons 35 An enclitic is a word which throws back its accent onto the preceding word. 1900A. E. Holdsworth Valley Gt. Shadow v, He walked out onto the balcony. 1938L. Bemelmans Life Class ii. iii. 142 Everything..can be rushed at a moment's notice onto the tables. 1954C. S. Lewis Horse & his Boy vi. 76 He jumped down onto the rubbish. 1963New Statesman 24 May 781/3 Russia..has heaved itself onto the plateau of the advanced industrial powers. 1973G. Greene Honorary Consul iii. iii. 132 The man was telling him to get back onto the so-called bed. 1973[see lead n.2 1 f]. 1976D. Heffron Crusty Crossed xxviii. 175 He was hanging onto Dot as though they both might collapse to the ground if he let go.
¶ Erroneous use of onto for on to.
1888Amer. Jrnl. Psychol. I. 383 Certain antecedent events that join onto the ones present. 1895Voice (N.Y.) 28 Mar. 4/2 It is a very pretty game, governor, but the people are onto it.
2. Aware of or knowledgeable about (a person, state of affairs, etc.); ‘wise to’ (something). Cf. on adv. 13 e. colloq. (orig. U.S.).
1877Chicago Street Gaz. 20 Oct. 1/2 May Willard, why don't you take a tumble to yourself and not be trying to put on so much style around the St. Mark's Hotel, for very near all of the boys are on to you. 1887Lantern (New Orleans) 9 July 4/3 Who is onto the rag racket. 1888New York Mercury 21 July 3/3 A wife poisoner..ought to have for his wife a woman who is on to him, and who can meet his poison advances with a kerosene bath. 1899A. H. Quinn Pennsylvania Stories 115 The class is about on to us, anyway, and if they find out about this deal [etc.]. 1911J. C. Lincoln Cap'n Warren's Wards xvi. 254 Everybody has been on to that for some time. 1919Wodehouse Damsel in Distress xxi. 248 ‘So you're on to him, too?’ said Billie. ‘When did you get wise?’ 1959J. Osborne World of Paul Slickey i. v. 50, I can't help feeling that he's on to us... That he knows about us. 1973G. Mitchell Murder of Busy Lizzie xiii. 151 ‘Won't you even tell Gavin that we may be on to something?’..‘You may say that I have certain suspicions, if you like.’
3. Math. (Written onto.) Used (in place of into) to express the relation of a set to its image under a mapping when every element of the image set has an inverse image in the first set.
1940C. C. MacDuffee Introd. Abstract Algebra ii. 54 If a homomorphism of A onto B exists, we write A ∼ B. 1962B. H. Arnold Intuitive Concepts Elem. Topology vii. 113 Each of the sets X and Y is the set of all real numbers; f(x) = 2x. The transformation f: X → Y is onto Y. 1965Patterson & Rutherford Elem. Abstract Algebra i. 3 We shall denote a mapping f of S1 into S2 by f: S1 → S2... If every element y of S2 is of the form f(x) for some x {elem} S1, we call f a mapping of S1 onto S2. 1971E. C. Dade in Powell & Higman Finite Simple Groups viii. 307, λ is an epimorphism of A onto a field F.
B. adj. Math. Used to designate a mapping of one set ‘onto’ another.
1942S. Lefschetz Algebraic Topology i. 7 If a transformation is ‘onto’, the inverse image of the complement of a set is the complement of the inverse image of that set. 1949― Introd. Topology 216 (Index), Onto transformation. 1951N. Jacobson Lect. Abstract Albegra I. 4 If α is a mapping of S into T, and β is a mapping of T into S such that αβ = 1S and βα = 1T, then α and β are 1-1, onto mappings and β = α-1. 1968[see into a.]. 1971E. C. Dade in Powell & Higman Finite Simple Groups viii. 285 By Lemma 9.5 the map is onto. |