unto
/ˈʌntʊ/
"unto" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“unto” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #7,633 in English word frequency and used as a conjunction.
- #7,633
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
- 5
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Up to the time or degree that; until.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | unto |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Conjunction |
| IPA | /ˈʌntʊ/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #7,633 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “unto” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for unto is 4 letters long, classified as a conjunction, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈʌntʊ/. Corpus data places it at rank #7,633 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Up to the time or degree that; until.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 5 likely wrong-spelling variants for unto, with forms such as "nuto", "unnto", and "unot". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "UT", "UO", "UTC", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Etymologically, the entry records: Inherited from Middle English unto, from Old English *untō, *und tō, equivalent to un- (“against; toward; up to”) + to. Cognate with Old Frisian ont to ("until"; > Saterland Frisian antou (“until”)) (cf. Old Frisian und (“up to; till”), Old Frisian til (“ti… The correct English form is unto, spelled U-N-T-O.
Definition
- 1Up to the time or degree that; until.
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English unto, from Old English *untō, *und tō, equivalent to un- (“against; toward; up to”) + to. Cognate with Old Frisian ont to ("until"; > Saterland Frisian antou (“until”)) (cf. Old Frisian und (“up to; till”), Old Frisian til (“till; to”)), Old Saxon untō, untuo (“until”), Old High German unze, unzi, unza (“until”), Old Norse und (“as far as; up to”), Gothic 𐌿𐌽𐍄𐌴 (untē, “until; as long as”).
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: nuto,unnto,unot,untto,utno
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of unto - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “unto”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is U-N-T-O - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈʌntʊ/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “UT” - see the side-by-side comparison. unto vs UT
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.