dose
Pluraldoses
Pluraldoses
- 1A measured amount of medicine meant to be taken at one time.
The label warned against taking more than one dose within six hours.
Nurses recorded each dose the patient received throughout the night.
Similardosage, measure, portion
Note
Medicine is where the word began. Greek dósis, literally "a giving," from dídōmi "to give," was Galen's term for an amount of medicine. Keep it apart from dosage. A dose is the single portion, such as one 500 mg tablet. The dosage is the whole schedule: how much, how often, for how long. "A single dose" and "the correct dosage" are not interchangeable.
- 2The amount of a substance, agent, or radiation taken in or received at one time.
Technicians calculated the radiation dose each patient absorbed during the scan.
The dose of caffeine in a single cup of coffee varies by brew.
Similaramount, quantity, dosage, measure
Note
The medical sense widened here into a measure of exposure. What counts is what a body takes in, whether anyone meant to give it or not. The manganese that nineteenth-century miners breathed from ore, described by The Economist in 2014, is a dose in this sense. The agent need not even be active, and radiation fits as easily as a drug.
- 3To give a measured amount of medicine to a person or animal.
Veterinarians dose horses according to body weight.
The pharmacist showed her how to dose the child safely.
Note
The verb takes the patient as its object and introduces the medicine with "with." George Meredith writes in The Adventures of Harry Richmond (1871), "I have dosed her with an opiate." That pattern, someone dosed with something, separates it from the prescribing verb, which stands without an object, as when physicians dose by weight.
- 4A generous measure or extended experience of something.
His speech delivered a heavy dose of reality to the new recruits.
We got a full dose of city life during our stay.
Similarmeasure, helping, taste, portion
Note
The medical measure stretched to cover experience at large, still keeping the idea of something taken in by the amount. In The Heart of Darkness (1899), Conrad's narrator calls six years in Eastern seas "a regular dose of the East." The familiar modern phrase is a dose of reality. It stands close to the disagreeable-medicine sense, but here the stress falls on how much was taken, not on how unpleasant it was.
- 5To work out and prescribe the correct amount of a medicine.
Physicians dose according to age, weight, and kidney function.
It can be hard to dose accurately when patient records are incomplete.
Similarprescribe
- 6To secretly give an unwilling person a drug that leaves them helpless.
The bartender noticed a man attempting to dose a customer's glass.
She feared that someone had tried to dose her during the night.
Note
A darker use of the same verb, for drugging someone in secret. The object can be the person or the drink. Pamela Donovan's Drink Spiking and Predatory Drugging (2016) recounts a confession that one man "had dosed" a victim's drink, in a case involving chloral hydrate. Roofie is the slang equivalent. Dose sounds plainer and suits a factual account.
- 7A common cold: a viral illness of the nasal passages, sometimes accompanied by fever.
She caught a dose that left her sniffling for a week.
A bad dose kept him in bed with a fever for days.
Note
Irish speech uses it, colloquially, for an ordinary cold, as in "There's a dose going round." The same noun once meant a venereal infection, so a listener unfamiliar with the Irish use may hear the wrong thing. Context and the casual "going round" usually settle it.
- 8Something unpleasant that one is forced to accept or endure.
The criticism was a bitter dose, but he accepted it without protest.
Defeat is a hard dose for any champion to swallow.
Similarpill
Note
Here medicine you must swallow becomes a figure for hardship: criticism, defeat or bad news taken because it cannot be refused. The usage is dated, and its edge is the unpleasantness. That is what separates it from the "plenty of something" meaning, which is still current and can be neutral or even welcome.
- 9A sexually transmitted infection.
He caught a dose during shore leave and visited the clinic in secret.
It would be very expensive to cure a dose here, as well as unbelievably painful.
1978, Lawrence Durrell, Livia (Avignon Quintet)Note
Old slang for a sexually transmitted infection, counted like any illness: one gives, catches or cures a dose. Shel Silverstein built a 1972 song title on it, Don't Give A Dose to the One You Love Most, and Lawrence Durrell's Livia (1978) speaks of curing one. The word is dated and blunt. Outside period dialogue, "sexually transmitted infection" is the safe term.
- 10To pass a venereal disease on to another person.
The sailor accused the woman of dosing him during shore leave.
Sometime back, one of your scarlet sisters dosed me proper.
1977, The White Buffalo, Wild Bill HickokSimilarinfect
Note
The verb partner of the dated slang noun, and just as dated: to dose someone is to infect them. The White Buffalo (1977) puts it in Wild Bill Hickok's mouth: "one of your scarlet sisters dosed me proper." Like the noun, it belongs to period voice rather than present-day speech.
- 11Archaic form of doze.
Note
An unrelated word that happens to share the spelling. It is an older way of writing doze, a light, short sleep, and has no link to medicine. Benjamin Abbott's Experience and Gospel Labors (1839) has him fall "into a dose more like sleep than any I had during the whole night." Read it as doze. In modern writing, use doze, since dose would be taken as the medical word.
- 12Archaic form of doze.
Note
The verb keeps the same old spelling of doze, and it can trip a reader badly. In William Henry Hudson's Far Away And Long Ago (1918), a "night-nurse idly dosing by the fire" is napping, not giving medicine. Here the verb takes no object, which helps tell it from the medicating verb.
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Practice
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Origin
Borrowed from Middle French dose, from Late Latin dosis, from Ancient Greek δόσις (dósis, "a portion prescribed," literally "a giving"), used by Galen and other Greek physicians for an amount of medicine, ultimately from δίδωμι (dídōmi, "to give").