dose
Definitions
General English
- noun an attack of a disease
- noun the amount of a drug calculated by a doctor to be necessary for a patient
General Science
- noun the amount of a drug or of ionising radiation received by an organism
Agriculture
- noun the amount of medicine given to an animal to cure it of a disorder
- verb to give an animal medicine
Electronics
- The amount of ionizing radiation incident upon, or absorbed by, a given mass, volume, or body. May be expressed in roentgens, rems, rads, or reps. Also called dosage, or radiation dose.
- synonymdosage
Medical
- noun a measured quantity of a drug or radiation which is to be given to someone at one time
- noun a short period of experiencing a minor illness
- noun an infection with a sexually transmitted disease
- verb to provide someone with medication
- noun a measured quantity of a drug calculated to be necessary for someone
Military
- noun an amount of medicine given to a person
Slang
- noun a venereal infection. Until the 1960s the word most often referred to a bout of gonorrhoea.
Wine
- an additional ingredient such as syrup added to wine to fortify it
- a mixture of sugar, water or wine, and yeast added to still white wine just before bottling to start secondary fermentation and produce sparkling wine. Dosage is used as a means of controlling the sweetness of the finished wine and is often the way of producing different styles of sparkling wine from brut (very dry, with no added sugar in the dosage) to doux (sweet, with added sugar in the dosage).
- the process of adding a small quantity of extra wine to each bottle of Champagne after disgorgement to make up for the liquid lost, before the bottles are closed
Origin & History of “dose”
A dose is literally ‘that which is given to one’ – etymologically and semantically, it is a parallel formation to donation. It comes via French dose and late Latin dosis from Greek dósis, a derivative of the verb didónai ‘give’ (which is related to English date, donate, etc). It originally meant simply ‘giving, gift’, but was used by Greek physicians such as Galen for ‘portion of medicine administered’, and it is that application that has proved most durable. The modern slang sense ‘venereal infection’ dates from just before world War I.
