underdose

An inadequate dose (of a medication).

Noun

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...
- 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...
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:
- 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...

From under- + dose, by analogy with overdose.

To administer an inadequate dose (to someone or to oneself).
- 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...
- 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.
To administer an inadequate dose of (a medication).
- […] 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...
- 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...
- 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...
To 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...