Towards vs Into - What's the difference?
towards | into |
Variant of toward.
* 1835 , Sir , Sir (James Clark Ross),
* {{quote-news, year=2011, date=October 1, author=Phil McNulty, work=BBC Sport
, title= (obsolete) In the direction of something (indicated by context).
* 1590 , Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene , II.iv:
(obsolete) Near; at hand; in state of preparation; toward.
* Shakespeare
Going inside (of).
*
, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=1
, passage=He used to drop into my chambers once in a while to smoke, and was first-rate company. When I gave a dinner there was generally a cover laid for him. I liked the man for his own sake, and even had he promised to turn out a celebrity it would have had no weight with me.}}
* {{quote-news, year=2011, date=November 3, author=Chris Bevan, work=BBC Sport
, title= Going to a geographic region.
Against, especially with force or violence.
Producing, becoming.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-19, author=(Peter Wilby)
, volume=189, issue=6, page=30, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly)
, title= After the start of.
* , chapter=13
, title= (colloquial) Intensely interested in or attracted to.
(mathematics) Taking distinct arguments to distinct values.
(British, archaic, India, mathematics) Expressing the operation of multiplication.
(mathematics) Expressing the operation of division, with the denominator given first. Usually with "goes".
Investigating the subject.
* Andrea Tyler and Vyvyan Evans, "Bounded landmarks", in The Semantics of English Prepositions: Spatial Scenes, Embodied Meaning and Cognition , Cambridge University Press, 2003, 0-521-81430 8
As prepositions the difference between towards and into
is that towards is variant of toward while into is going inside (of).As an adverb towards
is in the direction of something (indicated by context).As an adjective towards
is near; at hand; in state of preparation; toward.As an initialism INTO is
the Irish national teacher's organisation.towards
English
Preposition
(en-prep) (mainly in British English )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.
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
* towardUsage 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
* SeeAdverb
(en adverb)- Thus as he spake, lo far away they spyde / A varlet running towards hastily [...].
Adjective
(-)- We have a trifling foolish banquet / Towards .
Statistics
* English prepositionsinto
English
(wikipedia into)Preposition
(English prepositions)Rubin Kazan 1-0 Tottenham, passage=This time Cudicini was left helpless when Natcho stepped up to expertly curl the ball into the top corner.}}
Finland spreads word on schools, passage=Imagine a country where children do nothing but play until they start compulsory schooling at age seven. Then, without exception, they attend comprehensives until the age of 16. Charging school fees is illegal, and so is sorting pupils into ability groups by streaming or setting.}}
The Mirror and the Lamp, passage=“[…] They talk of you as if you were Croesus—and I expect the beggars sponge on you unconscionably.” And Vickers launched forth into a tirade very different from his platform utterances. He spoke with extreme contempt of the dense stupidity exhibited on all occasions by the working classes.}}