Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- transitive verb To soak or fill so that no more liquid may be absorbed.
- transitive verb To supply with the maximum that can be held or contained; fill thoroughly: synonym: imbue.
- transitive verb Chemistry To cause (a substance) to unite with the greatest possible amount of another substance.
- transitive verb Economics To supply (a market) with a good or service in an amount that consumers are able and willing to purchase.
- adjective Saturated.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Saturated.
- In entomology, deep; very intense: applied to colors: as, saturate green, umber, black, etc.
- To fill full or to excess; cause to be thoroughly penetrated or imbued; soak: as, to
saturate a sponge with water; a mind saturated with prejudice. - In chem., to impregnate or unite with till no more can be received: thus, an acid saturates an alkali, and an alkali saturates an acid, when the point of neutralization has been reached, and the mixture is neither acid nor basic in its character.
- In physics: To bring (a given space or a vapor) into a state of saturation. See
saturation . - To magnetize (a magnet) to saturation, or so that the intensity of its magnetization is the greatest which it can retain when not under the inductive action of a strong magnetic field.
- In optics, to render pure, or free from admixture of white light: said of colors.
- To satisfy.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To cause to become completely penetrated, impregnated, or soaked; to fill fully; to sate.
- transitive verb (Chem.) To satisfy the affinity of; to cause to become inert by chemical combination with all that it can hold.
- adjective Filled to repletion; saturated; soaked.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb To cause to become completely
penetrated ,impregnated , orsoaked ;imbue . - verb To satisfy the affinity of; to cause a substance to become inert by chemical combination with all that it can hold.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb infuse or fill completely
- verb cause (a chemical compound, vapour, solution, magnetic material) to unite with the greatest possible amount of another substance
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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My new strategy begins like the old, with "shock and awe," but this time let us "saturate" the cities and the villages of Yemen, not with explosives and incendiaries, but rather with food, potable water, clothing, medicines and even money.
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Leaving aside the fact that "saturate" could itself be categorized as an imprecise metaphor -- after all, language can presumably accommodate limitless metaphors -- there is, everywhere you look, heightened awareness of the extent to which our opinions, judgments and behavior are shaped by figurative linguistic concepts:
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KURTZ: And in terms of that kind of saturate, Peggy Wehmeyer, I've had some Catholics say to me that there had been too much coverage of the pope.
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The reason why it is of no use to try to 'saturate' is precisely what the Edinburgh Reviewers have suggested, -- 'THAT THERE IS NO LIMIT
Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 2 Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay 1829
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Authorities 'saturate' Walterboro streets after rash of deadly shootings
Stories: Local News 2010
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Some scales "saturate", which is to say at some critical size they stop accurately measuring the size of an event.
Wired Campus 2010
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Apparently it took only a trace of the gas to "saturate" the absorption - that is, in the bands of the spectrum where CO2 blocked radiation, it did it so thoroughly that more gas could make little difference.
RealClimate Tom Dayton 2010
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LATEST: Combined army and police patrols will be deployed to "saturate" Christchurch's quake-hit eastern suburbs and deter opportunist crime.
Stuff.co.nz - Stuff 2010
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Some of these technologies may allow scientists to directly measure biomass in dense forests-currently many sensing technologies are limited by their tendency to "saturate" at a threshold well below the actual biomass in such forests.
Mongabay.com News 2009
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Valve said it will "saturate" New York, Chicago, Boston, Seattle, Los Angeles and San Francisco with the outdoor ads, along with key placements in Minneapolis and Dallas, peaking throughout the month of November.
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