Dairy-free means made without milk or anything from it. A dairy-free option, dairy-free chocolate, is it dairy-free.
It is not the same as lactose-free, since lactose-free products are still made from milk, and somebody with a milk allergy cannot have them. Most of the world's adults cannot digest lactose easily, so the market is enormous.
1adjectivedairy-freeMade without milk or anything from it.
“My son is allergic to milk, so we buy dairy-free ice cream made from oats.”
dairy-free is a quality.
Dairy plus free, on the pattern of the many -free labels food packaging uses.
Proto-Indo-European
*dʰeyǵʰ-
Anglo-Norman
deyerie — dairy
Middle English
deyerie — dairy, dairy farm
English
dairy
English, today
dairy-free
From dairy + free. dairy Middle English deyerie (“dairy, dairy farm”), from Anglo-Norman deyerie (“dairy”), from deye + -erie; by surface analysis, dey + -ry. Cognate with Scots dery, dyrie.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA