Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A commercial establishment for processing or selling milk and milk products.
  • noun A place where milk and cream are stored and processed.
  • noun A dairy farm.
  • noun The dairy business; dairying.
  • noun Food containing milk or milk derivatives.
  • adjective Of, for, or relating to milk or milk products.
  • adjective Of or relating to dairying.
  • adjective Judaism Of or relating to food products containing milk or milk derivatives and not containing meat or meat derivatives, as dictated by dietary law.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun That branch of farming which is concerned with the production of milk, and its conversion into butter and cheese.
  • noun A house or room where milk and cream are kept and made into butter and cheese.
  • noun A shop where milk, butter, etc., are sold.
  • noun A dairy-farm.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The place, room, or house where milk is kept, and converted into butter or cheese.
  • noun That department of farming which is concerned in the production of milk, and its conversion into butter and cheese.
  • noun rare A dairy farm.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A place, often on a farm, where milk is processed and turned into products such as butter and cheese.
  • noun A shop selling dairy products.
  • noun Products produced from milk.
  • noun New Zealand A corner-store, superette or 'mini-mart' of some description.
  • adjective referring to products produced from milk.
  • adjective referring to the milk production and processing industries
  • adjective UK on food labelling, containing fats only from dairy sources (e.g. dairy ice cream)

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a farm where dairy products are produced

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English daierie : daie, dairymaid (from Old English dǣge, bread kneader; see dheigh- in Indo-European roots) + Anglo-Norman -erie, place (from Old French; see –ery).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Origin 1250-1300, (Middle English daierie and other forms), from dey ("dairymaid") + -ery.

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Examples

Comments

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  • NZ slang - corner store.

    February 8, 2009

  • "Dairy products were also regarded as peasant food. The elite idea of the rustic condition is shown by the chorus of a song written at the time of a great Flemish peasant insurrection (between 1323 and 1328), according to which peasants thrive on curdled milk, bread, and cheese. Anything better would render them incapable of work. In fact, however, as far back as the thirteenth century a few cheeses were acknowledged as stylish. Brie, Comte, and Roquefort had enough prestige that they were known outside their regions of origin, but only in fifteenth-century Italy do we find a discussion of cheese addressed to an audience of gourmets. In Pantaleone da Confienza's 'summa' on dairy products, cheese is for the first time a delicacy worthy of comment and discrimination."

    Paul Freedman, Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2008), 41.

    November 27, 2017