underdose

plural underdoses · alternative under-dose

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

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   If Patrick were to add a little sugar to her urine specimen so that she would take a hefty dose of insulin, and then to make her take a good walk without her little tin of glucose […] she would probably pass out on the mountainside. Or suppose he substituted his own urine in the test tube so that she would take an under-dose?

   1960, Muriel Spark, chapter 7, in The Bachelors, London: Macmillan

2. figurativelyAn 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

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   It seems the kid suffers from an underdose of mother love, so he kills pretty girls—exactly the problem of Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho.”

   1979 September 21, Tom Shales, “‘Eischied’ Walks Tall”, in The Washington Post

present singular third person underdoses · participle present underdosing · participle past underdosed · past underdosed · alternative under-dose

1. intransitivetransitiveTo administer an inadequate dose (to someone or to oneself).

   2016, Kelly Close, letter to the editor, The New York Times, 29 February, 2016, It is true that insulin costs are high; as a result some patients may underdose. We need better reimbursement to address that.

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   1945, Alexander Fleming, Nobel acceptance speech, cited in Jenny Rohn, “The hunt is on for new antibiotics—but we have to start looking outside the lab,” The Guardian, 19 February, 2015, The time may come when penicillin can be bought by anyone in the shops. Then there is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug make them resistant.

2. transitiveTo administer an inadequate dose of (a medication).

   An intern underdosed her heparin (blood thinner), and she suffered a large blood clot in a lung.

   2013 July 26, Judy Mandell, “‘Critically Ill’ author Frederick Southwick on what ails our healthcare system”, in Los Angeles Times

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   […] a Child new-born may take an eighth or tenth part of a paper, a Child of a year old a quarter of a paper or a sixth part, 2, 3, or 4 years old a third 5, 6, 7, half a paper, &c. for you cannot hurt if you over or under dose it a little; the Medicine being safe.

   1679, Richard Fletcher, “Directions for the Use of that Excellent Medicine Fletcher’s Powder”, in The Vertues of that Well-Known and Often Experienced Medicine Fletcher’s Powder, London, page 6

   One such drug class can solve uncontrolled hypertension in perhaps half of cases yet is widely under-prescribed and/or under-dosed, with tragic consequences.

   2016 August 21, Samuel J. Mann, “The Scandal of Uncontrolled Hypertension: A Widely-Overlooked Remedy”, in HuffPost

3. figurativelyintransitiveTo use a scant or inadequate amount of an ingredient or product.

   My advice is to slightly under-dose on the whiskey in Delia’s recipe, who I imagine went for a rather better bottle than I did.

   2016 November 4, Stephen Bush, “Delia’s Christmas cake recipe takes a little bit of practice”, in The Guardian