dose

noun

1. A measured portion of medicine taken at any one time.

   “Why did he give you only a single 500 mg dose? The correct dosage of this antibiotic is one 500 mg tablet twice a day for 10 days.”

2. The quantity of an agent (not always active), substance, or radiation administered or experienced at any one time.

   “Manganism has been known about since the 19th century, when miners exposed to ores containing manganese[…]began to totter, slur their speech and behave like someone inebriated. The poisoning was irreversible, and soon ended in psychosis and death. Nowadays workers are exposed to far lower doses and manganism is rare.”

3. (dated, figuratively)Anything disagreeable that must be taken.
4. (figuratively)A good measure or lengthy experience of something.

   ““I had then, as you remember, just returned to London after a lot of Indian Ocean, Pacific, China Seas - a regular dose of the East - six years or so, and I was loafing about, hindering you fellows in your work and invading your homes, just as though I had got a heavenly mission to civilise you.””

   “The prospect of becoming a father is a dose of reality that threatens to bring his dream world crashing down.”

   “People who don't get their daily dose of light at the right time of day can end up with worse health.”

5. (dated)A venereal infection.

   “Don't give a dose to the one you love most. / Give her some marmalade... give her some toast.”

   “It would be very expensive to cure a dose here, as well as unbelievably painful.”

6. (Ireland, colloquial)A cold; a common, viral illness of the nasal passage, sometimes with fever.

   “There's a dose going round.”

7. (alt-of, archaic)Archaic form of doze.

   “Just at the dawning of the day, I fell into a dose more like sleep than any I had during the whole night, in which I dreamed that I saw a river as clear as crystal […]”

verb

1. (transitive)To administer a dose (of medicine) to.

   “"She thought herself broad awake, and I have dosed her with an opiate."”

2. To prescribe a dose.
3. (transitive)To surreptitiously administer a dose of an incapacitating drug (to an unwilling subject); to roofie.

   “The defense never conceded that their clients had administered chloral [hydrate], but Death and Campbell said initially—during their contested station house confessions—that McAlister had dosed [Jennie Bosschieter's] drink.”

4. (dated, transitive)To transmit a venereal disease to.

   “Sometime back, one of your scarlet sisters dosed me proper.”

5. (alt-of, archaic)Archaic form of doze.

   “It was to me a marvellous experience; to be here, propped up with pillows in a dimly-lighted room, the night-nurse idly dosing by the fire; the sound of the everlasting wind in my ears, howling outside […]”