oversaturate

verb

over·​sat·​u·​rate ˌō-vər-ˈsa-chə-ˌrāt 

oversaturated; oversaturating

transitive verb

: to saturate to an excessive degree

… since the company went public, it's been opening so many stores that it's at risk of oversaturating its own market …

—Angela Mulholland

… the Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge … slipped several feet in February when storms oversaturated the underlying soil.

—Kurtis Alexander

… settings that don't oversaturate colors or look too dim.

—Dieter Bohn

also : supersaturate

oversaturated the water with salt

oversaturated adjective

… delivers impressive image quality. Colors are bright and realistic without being oversaturated.

—Luisa Simone

Perhaps you remember a chemistry experiment from high school: You dissolve a salt in hot water, let the solution cool down, put a small crystal in the now oversaturated solution—then all of a sudden crystals form.

—Bert J. M. de Vries

oversaturation

ˌō-vər-ˌsa-chə-ˈrā-shən 

adjective

oversaturation of the market with too many action films

… colors usually struck a nice balance between accurate and pleasant oversaturation.

—Mitt Jones

Examples of oversaturate in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo have a decades-long chokehold on a market that is arguably oversaturated already. —WIRED, 20 Mar. 2023

Sources say Kurtzman, whose Secret Hideout captains the Trek franchise under a nine-figure overall deal with producers CBS Studios, began making plans to convert Section 31 into a tentpole feature film for the platform last summer as insiders were nervous about oversaturating the iconic property. —Lesley Goldberg, The Hollywood Reporter, 18 Apr. 2023

The format becomes oversaturated, as everyone is doing a slightly different version of the same thing. —Martin Fritz Huber, Outside Online, 2 Mar. 2023

Apprehensiveness leads us to oversaturate ourselves with excess information and to overanalyze every single available option. —Luis E. Romero, Forbes, 28 Feb. 2021

The 1080p-pixel resolution is sharp, though colors can look slightly oversaturated. —WIRED, 25 Mar. 2023

In an effort to avoid oversaturating the Paro community, people aren’t brought into the talent pool until there is a specific demand for their expertise. —Alyssa Newcomb, Fortune, 6 Mar. 2023

We’re oversaturated with affordable housing. —Billy Kobin, The Courier-Journal, 16 Feb. 2023

Water should not stand on or oversaturate the soil. —oregonlive, 13 Nov. 2022

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Word History

First Known Use

1745, in the meaning defined above