dose
noun · verb
Simple meaning
A measured portion of medicine taken at any one time.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
dohsIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈdoʊs
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
A measured portion of medicine taken at any one time
The quantity of an active agent (substance or radiation) taken in or absorbed at any one time
figurative
A good measure or lengthy experience of something.
irelandcolloquial
A cold; a common, viral illness of the nasal passage, sometimes with fever.
verb
transitive
To surreptitiously administer a dose of an incapacitating drug (to an unwilling subject); to roofie.
transitive
To administer a dose (of medicine) to.
To prescribe a dose.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A2 · Elementary (estimated)
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- General English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A measured portion of medicine taken at any one time
Used this way, dose is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a clinical use: it belongs to medical description, where it is factual rather than emotive.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Medicine/healthcare
- Science
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use dose
- “The doctor told me to take one dose of this medicine every eight hours.”
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
The quantity of radiation absorbed per unit time.
The size dose that will cause death.
An additional dose that makes sure the first dose was effective.
An additional dose that makes sure the first dose was effective.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- radiotherapynoun
- medicationnoun
- placebonoun
- dosagenoun
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: measured portion of medicine taken at any one time
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.