Word.ws English Dictionary

under-dose

under-dose is the alternative form of underdose.

Meaning of underdose

Noun

underdose (plural underdoses)

  1. An inadequate dose (of a medication).
    • “[…] I put laudanum in his coffee last night. I was afraid to put in too much for fear of killing him, so I suppose I didn’t put in enough, for he laid wide awake all night.”
      “Ah, yes! that would be the effect of an under-dose of laudanum.”1871, E. D. E. N. Southworth, chapter 31, in Cruel as the Grave, Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Bros, page 333
  2. (figuratively) An inadequate amount of something.
    • “Seems as though sometimes I get an overdose of feeling, and an underdose of sense.”1955, Jim Kjelgaard, chapter 8, in The Lost Wagon, New York: Dodd, Mead & Co

See all 5 meanings of underdose

Forms of under-dose

Noun
pluralunder-doses
Verb
third-person singular presentunder-doses
present participleunder-dosing
past participleunder-dosed
pastunder-dosed

Questions about under-dose

What is under-dose the alternative form of?
Under-dose is the alternative form of underdose.

Words near under-dose in the dictionary

  1. under-diversification
  2. under-diversified
  3. under-diversifies
  4. under-diversify
  5. under-diversifying
  6. under-dose
  7. under-dosed
  8. under-doses
  9. under-dosing
  10. under-educated
  11. under-endowed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: under-dose (page history and authors); underdose (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “under-dose.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/under-dose. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.