cereal vs dry cereal

cereal and dry cereal both are nouns.

Word	Noun	Adjective	Verb	Adverb
cereal	Yes	Yes	No	No
dry cereal	Yes	No	No	No

As nouns, dry cereal is a hyponym of cereal; that is, dry cereal is a word with a more specific, narrower meaning than cereal:

Other hyponyms of cereal include Pablum, hot cereal, cold cereal.

cereal (noun)	dry cereal (noun)
a breakfast food prepared from grain	a cereal that is not heated before serving
foodstuff prepared from the starchy grains of cereal grasses
grass whose starchy grains are used as food: wheat, rice, rye, oats, maize, buckwheat, millet

cereal (adjective)	dry cereal (adjective)
made of grain or relating to grain or the plants that produce it