milkery

plural milkeries

1. uncommonA place where animals are milked.

   There were eight cows in the milkery where we went—a room thirty-five feet deep by sixteen wide.

   1892, Lee Meriwether, Afloat and Ashore on the Mediterranean, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, page 60

   5 more examples

   But a cow confined on ship-board, in the stable of a private citizen, or in the narrow stenchy stalls of the milkeries which supply cities, does not live a natural life, and can not by any possibility give natural, healthful milk; […]

   1862, “Health Track, No. 82. Milk—Its Uses.”, in W[illiam] W[hitty] Hall, editor, Hall’s Journal of Health, volume IX, New York, N.Y.: […] the Editor, […], and […] Trubner & Company, […], London

   Now contrast this with the untidy manner in which many farmers allow their milkers to milk the cows—hair unbrushed, full of husks and straws, perhaps, just as they come from loading hay or threshing grain; […] When we think of the condition of the hands and clothes of those who “go to the milkery” without washing, or change of raiment, or brushing the hair, we can not wonder that poor milk and butter are so common, even if there was no other reason for it.

   1879 October 4, Mrs. Henry Ward Beecher [i.e., Eunice White Beecher], “Milk and Butter”, in Harper’s Bazar […], volume XII, number 40, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 630, column 4

   Women’s clubs meet daily at the dairy and get an air plug as an inducement to gather at the milkery.

   1938 May 20, Radio Daily, volume 4, New York, N.Y.: Radio Daily Corp., →OCLC, page 8, column 1

   […] what more nutritious additive than the flesh of dead fems and of fem-cubs who did not survive the milkery?

   1974, Suzy McKee Charnas, The Slave and the Free: Walk to the End of the World, Motherlines, New York, N.Y.: Tom Doherty Associates, published 1999, →ISBN, page 65

   Mr. Speaker, if you get sentenced to one year imprisonment in this country, you get nothing at the end of 12 months though you have probably contributed in the growing of vegetables, the brining up of chickens, in the piggeries, in the milkery, in the carpentry shop, in the brick-making, et cetera.

   1984 July 17, Parliamentary Debates, volume 10, Harare: […] House of Assembly, →OCLC, page 407, column 2

   Synonyms: dairy, dairy farm

2. uncommonA place where milk is stored and it or dairy products are processed or sold.

   Elvira was sent out daily to buy meat, eggs, and milk from the carnicería and the lechería—literally, the meatery and the milkery.

   [1950, Carlos Fallon, A Variety of Fallon, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, →OCLC, page 37

   5 more examples

   The milk is cooled to a temperature of 5 degs. C. as soon as it is drawn, and must be kept cool until it is delivered at the milkery in Copenhagen, no milk being accepted if its temperature is over 10 degs.

   1899 April 28, “Milk Production on the Continent”, in Natal Department of Agriculture and Mines, The Agricultural Journal and Mining Record, volume II, number 3, Pietermaritzburg, Natal: William Watson, “Times of Natal” office, published 1900, →OCLC, page 85, column 2

   The proprietors of the neighbourhood have a milkery in the town four miles away; part is sold as milk—2d. a litre retail, 1¼d. wholesale—part is made into butter, and if there is skim-milk unsold it comes back for the pigs.

   1900, G[eorge] W[arrington] Steevens, “A Country Gentleman”, in Vernon Blackburn, editor, Glimpses of Three Nations, New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead and Company, →OCLC, pages 213–214

   Thence to the milkery. A litre, hot and bubbling. “Bfff! You have right, monsieur, it is cold.” The bakery. A walking-stick of bread. “But yes, monsieur, it is cold!” The village pump. A sparkling bottleful. “But yes——” The rest was inarticulate sobbing.

   1914, W[illiam] R[ichard] Titterton, “A Christmas Camp”, in Me as a Model, London: Frank & Cecil Palmer […], →OCLC, page 144

   […] would make myself remember marketing in Italy, where you must buy veal and beef at one butcher-shop, lamb and poultry at another, pork at the delicatessen shop, and fish at the fish market; where you find milk and butter only at the “milkery”, staples at a “drugstore”, bread at a breadstore, fruit and vegetables at the open market; […]

   1940, Scribner’s Commentator, volume VIII, number 2, New York, N.Y.: P. & S. Publishing, →OCLC, page 46, column 1

   The milkery was usually just a sideline thing along with some porkers and chickens. They used to sell to the general public from a little shed.

   1999 June 6, Dutchie, “I Almost Got to Shoot Somebody Tonight”, in alt.tasteless (Usenet), archived from the original on 26 Jan 2026

   Synonyms: dairy, milkhouse