word-forming element meaning "above, over, beyond," from Latin super (adverb and preposition) "above, over, on the top (of), beyond, besides, in addition to," from *(s)uper-, variant form of PIE root *uper "over." In English words from Old French, it appears as sur-. The primary sense seems to have shifted over time from usually meaning "beyond" to usually meaning "very much," which can be contradictory. E.g. supersexual, which is attested from 1895 as "transcending sexuality," from 1968 as "very sexual."
saturation n.
1550s, "act of supplying to fullness, complete satisfaction of an appetite" (Coverdale, a sense now obsolete), formed in English from saturate (q.v.), or else from Late Latin saturationem (nominative saturatio) "a filling, saturating," noun of action from past-participle stem of saturare "to fill full."
The sense in chemistry is by 1670s, "impregnation until no more can be received;" the general sense of "action of thoroughly soaking with fluid, condition of being soaked" is by 1846. By 1964 in reference to a type of color adjustment on a television screen; earlier it had been used in chromatics for "degree of intensity" (1878). Saturation bombing is from 1942 in reference to mass Allied air raids on Cologne and other German cities; the idea is credited to Arthur Harris.
"Saturation bombing," dropping as much as fifty-one tons a minute, depends on clockwork precision and a gigantic organization behind the lines. In the famous German raid on Coventry, 225 tons were dropped over a period of eight hours. In the British raid on Hamburg on July 27-28, 1943, more than 2,300 tons were dropped in forty-five minutes. A single raid of this type uses more than 100,000 air and ground personnel. [British Information Services, "The First Four Years," 1943]