Toxicology

The third entry is a dose diária admissível, and the adjective at the end is the one place on this page where English stands apart from everybody. Admissível means allowable, what a rule will let through, and French, Spanish and Italian all keep exactly that word in the settled term. Ours went to court instead. « Admissible » now belongs almost entirely to evidence and to pleadings — « admissible evidence », « the appeal was held not admissible » — and it asks whether a thing may be let into a hearing, not whether a quantity is safe to swallow every day for a lifetime. So « the admissible daily dose » would be understood and would still be wrong in register: it puts a judge where a committee stands. The term we actually use is « the acceptable daily intake », and both halves have moved. « Acceptable » carries admissível, and « intake » — a plain compound of « in » and « take » — carries dose, because the figure covers what is eaten and drunk and nothing that arrives by any other road.