Dose

How to spell dose

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce dose

What does dose mean?

1. nounA measured amount of medicine or other substance taken or given at one time.
2. verbTo give someone a measured amount of medicine or another substance.

Dose in a sentence

• noun

  The pharmacist explained the correct dose for an adult.

• verb

  The nurse had to dose each patient at exactly the same hour.

• noun

  A second dose of the vaccine was scheduled for three weeks later.

• verb

  Farmers sometimes dose livestock with vitamins before winter.

Where does dose come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word travels from the Greek dosis, which literally meant 'a giving' or 'a portion handed over', built on the verb didonai 'to give'. Greek physicians used it for a measured amount of medicine given to a patient at one time, and that medical sense stuck firmly as the word moved into Latin as dosis and then into Middle French as dose. English adopted it in the early 1600s, keeping the French spelling with its silent final 'e'. The same didonai root sits behind words like 'antidote' (something 'given against' a poison) and 'anecdote', so the family is wider than it first appears. The spelling trap is purely the soft 's', which sounds like a 'z': writers must resist turning dose into the unrelated word 'doze'.

How the word is built

• dos- (from Greek dosis: a giving)
• -e (silent ending kept from French)