In Latin, the phrase sensus plenior means "a fuller sense of.". This phrase in Biblical exegesis, is used to describe the deeper meaning intended by God

God

God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....

 but not intended by the human author. Walter C. Kaiser notes that F. Andre Fernandez coined the term in 1927, but it was popularized by Raymond E. Brown

Raymond E. Brown

The Reverend Raymond Edward Brown, S.S. , was an American Roman Catholic priest, a member of the Sulpician Fathers and a major Biblical scholar of his era...

. Brown defines sensus plenior as
This implies that more meaning can be found within scripture than the original human authors intended, and, therefore, a study of scripture that isolates a particular book and only concerns itself with the details of the authors time and situation can be incomplete.

Sensus plenior corresponds to Rabbinical interpretations of the Hebrew Scriptures — remez ("hint"), drash ("search"), and/or sod ("secret") — whereby 'deeper meaning' is drawn out or derived from the text.

Conservative Christians have used this term to mean the larger or whole teaching of scripture.

Jonah

One of the clearest examples comes from the story of Jonah

Jonah

Jonah is the name given in the Hebrew Bible to a prophet of the northern kingdom of Israel in about the 8th century BC, the eponymous central character in the Book of Jonah, famous for being swallowed by a fish or a whale, depending on translation...

. In the story, Jonah runs from God and is eventually thrown overboard into the Mediterranean Sea

Mediterranean Sea

The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...

. The Book of Jonah then says, "Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights." Yet, in the New Testament, Jesus

Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

 says, "For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." This shows that what happens literally in the story has a greater meaning than the writer of Jonah originally anticipated.

Additional References

• Raymond E. Brown
  Raymond E. Brown
  The Reverend Raymond Edward Brown, S.S. , was an American Roman Catholic priest, a member of the Sulpician Fathers and a major Biblical scholar of his era...
  
  , "The History and Development of the Theory of a Sensus Plenior," CBQ
  Catholic Biblical Quarterly
  The Catholic Biblical Quarterly is a refereed theological journal published by the Catholic Biblical Association of America....
  
  15 (1953) 141 - 162.
• The Jerome Biblical Commentary Vol. 1 1971, Geoffry Chapman Publishers, London, pp. 605–23.
• David H. Stern, Jewish New Testament Commentary 1992, Maryland, pp. 11–4.