Dose or doze?
dose is a noun meaning “A measured portion of medicine taken at any one time”; doze is a verb meaning “To sleep lightly or briefly; to nap, snooze”. Use dose as a noun and doze as a verb (doze is also a noun: “A light, short sleep or nap”). In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) dose is about 36 times as common as doze.
What is the difference between dose and doze?
| dose | doze | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun, verb | verb, noun, determiner |
| Meaning | A measured portion of medicine taken at any one time The quantity of an agent (not always active), substance, or radiation administered or experienced at any one time To administer a dose (of medicine) to | To sleep lightly or briefly; to nap, snooze To make dull; to stupefy A light, short sleep or nap |
| Example | 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 | I didn’t sleep very well, but I think I may have dozed a bit |
| Forms | doses | dozes, dozing, dozed |
| Pronunciation | /ˈdəʊ̯s/ /ˈdɵ̞ʊ̯s/ /ˈdoʊ̯s/ | /doʊz/ |
| In writing | 16 times per million words | about once in every 2 million words |
Sources: dose and doze in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of dose and doze
dose
- 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
To administer a dose (of medicine) to
- 3
The quantity of an agent (not always active), substance, or radiation administered or experienced at any one time
- 4
To prescribe a dose
- 5
datedAnything disagreeable that must be taken
- 6
To surreptitiously administer a dose of an incapacitating drug (to an unwilling subject); to roofie
- 7
A good measure or lengthy experience of something
a healthy dose of skepticism
- 8
datedTo transmit a venereal disease to
doze
- 1
To sleep lightly or briefly; to nap, snooze
I didn’t sleep very well, but I think I may have dozed a bit
- 2
A light, short sleep or nap
I felt much better after a short doze
- 3
slangTo bulldoze
- 4
Pronunciation spelling of those
- 5
To make dull; to stupefy
October 29, 1693, Robert South, a sermon preached at Christ-church in Oxford before the university They left for a long time (as it were) dozed and benumbed
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, dose or doze?
dose appears 16 times per million words; doze about once in every 2 million words.
dose 16 times per million wordsdoze about once in every 2 million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search dose vs doze?
“dose vs doze” is searched about 50 times a month on Google and 10 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“doze vs dose”, “dose or doze”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.