Dinner vs. Supper

You've not included 'tea', which is what working class northerners in the UK call it. And they call lunch 'dinner', and never eat lunch.

it's a class and a regional thing. i tend to use "dinner" for lunch time meal, "tea" for evening meal and "supper" for whatever i eat before bed, but it's not hard and fast especially if i have to make myself understood by my social betters.

xp

"packed lunch" feels ok tho

Yeah I dont say dinner or supper, I say tea.

Hull variations of packed lunch = "pack up" or "packing up"

in my mind, "dinner" is the big meal of the day. so christmas dinner happens around mid-day, but normally dinner happens in the evening. and "supper" is whatever meal happens after dinner..

(when i say "normally" i mean for me, obv)

Doesn't that just mean "you're fired"?

xposts

I agree with Tracer, though; dinner is your main meal and the other is lunch (midday-ish) or tea (early evening). Supper is a frivolous posh thing for people with servants.

no, you may bring your pack up or your packing up to work with you. getting fired wd probably involve more industrial language.

i eat supper a lot but never really have to refer to it as supper. it's just "cheese that i eat before i go to bed" tbh

i use "supper" and "dinner" kind of interchangeably, though 90% of the time say the latter. i did find out the actual proper etymological difference between them a few years ago but can't remember it

"tea" i think of as like...afternoon elevenses. a cake or a scone and a cup of tea or coffee. not a proper meal.

Dinner is a meal you've cooked yourself, but supper is a meal cooked for you.

in P.G. Wodehouse maybe

my dinner yesterday was a nice tub of pre-chopped vegetables from M&S (reduced to £1 and only 4 mins in the microwave), and two pork pies :)

breakfast, lunch and tea in our house. dinner is something has taken extra effort.

Dinner and supper are different meals!

But I will not elaborate, as this is where it becomes painfully obvious one can never escape one's class background.

wait so if you don't drink tea is it still "tea"?

so much to learn about this imaginary faerie lande

for me your early evening meal is "tea", and i don't drink tea. this comes from my working class midlands upbringing. it comes from the same place as the light afternoon snack of actual tea and sandwiches that lex was talking about, working class seems to have appropriated the name without having the same meal to use it on.

Tea is a drink! With crumpets and maybe with those little cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Taken mid afternoon to assuage the endless weariness of being posh and bored.

To Northerners, and the Working Classes, it's a meal. Their ways are strange and unknown to us.

(I will stop being facetious now.)

You may be Working Class if you make your own Tea. If you're really posh, your maid or your fag burns your crumpets for you.

so many frozen/pre-cooked meals now i'm a singleton, cooking for myself just feels like a chore lol stereotype

wait so if you don't drink tea is it still "tea"?

so much to learn about this imaginary faerie lande

― Euler, Thursday, March 15, 2012 6:45 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is was so confusing to me when I first heard it but, yes, some UK ppl say "tea" to mean dinner. You know what was similarly confusing? The first time I heard "pudding" instead of dessert. I was in grocery shopping with a friend before a dinner party and she said we had to bring the pudding so I was very confused when she started asking me what kind of cake I thought we should buy. "But you said we had to bring pudding . . . " "Right so what kind of cake do you think would be good?" A very who's on first moment.

ha i was gonna bring up "pudding", i totally use it to mean dessert

This is one of those polls where there should be a nationality option attached: Britishers, Merkins, Colonials, Other ;-)

"you can't have your pudding if you don't finish your tea" is basically the key statement of this poll, i must've heard it a thousand times as a kid

lol you have no idea how confusing that statement would have been to me at one point.

Dinner, btw. Supper - I don't even know what "supper" is. I feel like it's something they'd say in like Idaho or something. I've never heard anyone say it irl either. I feel like it must definitely be some sort of regional thing.

What does pudding mean in the US?

whoa, that line on The Wall, about meat & pudding, makes more sense now

"pudding" can = everything from christmas pudding to like, fruit salad

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2234/2261588035_c1e5968c09.jpg

pudding

Hello.

I have a roamed around this country, and lived in the NE and the S.

When we were in SShields, we had Dinner at dinnertime (12:00 or so), and supper at suppertime (20:00)
Supper was often a main meal and a pudding.

Then we moved down south, Windsor it was (bit different)..

My mother told me that we had to call it differently now.

So, Lunch was the 12:00 thing, and Dinner was the evening meal. Which consisted of a main meal and a 'sweet'. Which was not a toffee, but what we used to call a 'pudding' but we couldn't call it that anymore because a pudding was a suet thing with apples in it or such. Or even meat, which would mean we ate a pudding for dinner. I think. Where am I? Oh yeah, windsor...

All that changed on Sunday, where the Dinner was 13:00 or thereabouts, and a 'tea' was had at around 17:00

Hope that helps you all.

My memory is that "pudding" in the States was some kind of weird, sweet slop, like tapioca, but smooth. Flavoured custard, basically.

x-post

in the Home of the Brave "pudding" means mushy & kinda liquid-y sweet thing

x-post otm - Pudding in the US is a specific type of dessert. I guess it's sort of like a thicker more set version of what you call custard. It looks like what Euler posted.

Tapicoa is a type of pudding, exactly.

What about a steak and kidney pudding, then?

PUDDING!!!

http://www.visualphotos.com/photo/2x3698177/Chocolate_pudding_UK_944781.jpg

i forgot about "sweet" instead of "pudding"

you used to get "sweets" in Blackpool boarding houses too

What about 'afters'?

rice pudding & bread pudding breake the molde a little bit though

steak & kidney pudding sounds hilarious

Yeah, I was thinking about savory puddings, like things boiled in bags, like sausages without edible skins or pies without crusts? Blood pudding and the like.

Proper puddings should be the shape of what mark posted, whether they're Spotted Dick or Steak & Kidney.

Different kind of pudding, black pudding.

http://keithroysdon.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/jello-pudding-pops-bill-cosby.jpg

Pudding is technically a way of cooking (boiling in a sack) but to me, it means "any kind of sweet course served after a meal."

I'VE SEEN THE WORD PUDDING TOO MANY TIMES NOW AND IT HAS LOST ALL CONTEXT AND MEANING TO ME

"pudding" = savoury or sweet dish that is usually steamed

or

"dessert"

or

vaguely similar kinds of dish to the US meaning

We don't have savory puddings at all. If we have something similar it's definitely not called "pudding".

Afters - no. That would be very confusing.

Pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding pudding.

Pudding is the manner of it's being cooked and that: Steamed...

xpost.

Pudding.

god let's not even go near "pud"

"Sweet".

It's a fucking horrific verb to me now, not a lovely delicious known.

Known? Noun. Fuck me. Brane's gone.

Thread premise:

-Northerners are weird
-the Working Classes are weird
-Americans are weird
-Pudding, WTF?

600 new answers by tomorrow!

i wonder if "black pudding" comes from a mishearing of French "boudin" - seems quite possible

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/steakandkidneypuddin_66320

if you type the word "hoover" enough times it does the exact same thing that "pudding" is doing to nick

Also, does "pud" rhyme with hood or what?

Yes, pud rhymes with hood, but shorten the vowel.

but you wouldn't pull your pudding

OED says that "dinner" comes from the French "diner", which ain't no shock, but that "supper" comes from the French "souper", which is evidently what the Belgians call the regular evening meal, but which the French use to refer to a midnight snack, like the way you all were suggesting supper is used by some in the UK.

i wonder what the older english word used to be for dinner, the one that got displaced by the normans

Which leaves "Lunch" and "Hoover"

Steak & kidney pudding was always known as "baby's head" in our house. Anyone else heard that one?

Fucking hell no.

Do you call toad-in-the-hole "babies arms in a blanket" too?

gross

Haha no! Think it might be a northern thing. xp

Don't want to ponder your disgusting familial name for a pork pie.

I remember crying over heinz ravioli, it looked like babies feet that had just been hacked off.

Sorry if anyone's reading this on acid...

FUCKING HELL MARK

OK..

Beautiful unicorns running through candyfloss......

In the slang of some parts of North West England, steak pudding is known as "babby's yead" ("baby's head"). Historically, "baby's head" has also occurred in the slang of the British Armed Forces.

North west? Sorry, I have no knowledge there.

Don't think any of our family's from Lancs either so I'm guessing it's an expression my Grandad bought home from the war.

brought

Ah, was expecting the expression to turn up on Antiques Roadshow any day...

OK, soft-as-shite Southerner here. For me:

midday meal = "lunch"
midday meal out at a restaurant = "lunch"
evening meal = "tea"
evening meal out at a restaurant = "dinner"

If I was enough of a nancy to have "high tea" between 2 and 4PM, I'd call it "afternoon tea". The times that I've had afternoon tea around older relatives houses it's consisted of crusts-cut-off sandwiches, cupcakes, biscuits, and tea (the liquid kind), served in the living room (some people call it a lounge) on a coffee table.
Hope that makes sense.

Wait, English people also use "living room"? I'd always thought they called it the lounge

I thought lounge was american?

altho obv I withdraw to the drawing room after dinner, where i don my smoking jacket.

Frontroom.

i've never heard an english person call it the lounge - it's "living room" or "sitting room" or "front room" (i can't even remember the class/regional reasons for any of those, have said all three in my time but default to "living room" mostly)

Modern open-plan family living < / kirstyallsop > really fucks things up.

the front room is the posh living room that you never use because it's full of junk.

i wonder what the older english word used to be for dinner, the one that got displaced by the normans

looks like 'aefenmete' for evening-dinner, but 'undernmete' the big meal nearest our lunch-dinner, though it's a bit earlier, more brunchy.

:)

I call mine The Long Room in tribute to Lord's (it's long enough to have a window at either end) but tbh this is an affectation that isn't sticking - three years in and I still default to 'living room' every other time.

"Lounge" definitely not American

our living room was "the lounge" by default when i was a kid

from my understanding of pre-Norman Engerland (gleaned from time spent at Renaissance Festivals), there were no meals; everyone just ate roasted turkey legs all day, & steak on a stake, before going jousting.

There's a great Lenny Henry stand-up routine (back when Lenny Henry wrote great stand-up routines ;_;) about the difference between the 'front room' and the 'sitting room'.

They'd have paninis for 'undernmete'

xposts

think "lounge" may be more working class in origin - see proper pubs where there is "the bar" and "the lounge"

My older relatives call the formal guest room at the front of the house a "parlour". I almost never hear anyone under 60 call it that.

Some of my friends have a "keeping room" - never heard that until recently.

A "sitting room" is a small lounging area off a bedroom, at least where I live.

Then wth is 'saloon'?

post-Norman they'd just just idle away on a settee in the lounge

OED:

lounge, n. 2.

a. A place for lounging; a gathering of loungers.

1775 R. B. Sheridan Rivals i. i, But pray, Mr. Fag, what kind of a place is this Bath?‥Fag.‥'tis a good lounge.

b. The drawing-room of a private house; the public sitting-room in a hotel or institution. Also transf.

1881 J. T. Slugg Reminisc. Manchester xxvi. 306 The lounge or drawing-room‥was extremely elegant.

Then wth is 'saloon'?

it's a pub full of cowboys iirc

Americans have this awful word "den" to refer to the second living room which is where you put your tv & comfortable furniture, not the piano that no one plays & the "fancy" uncomfortable furniture which goes in the real living room (& then doesn't get used except for fancy occasions)

Keeping Room is what Buffalo Bill calls his cellar in Silence of the Lambs.

Isn't that a cubby-hole?

The Lounge (or "Best Room") was the room at the front, rarely used as it was easy to be seen from the street in.

So, reserved for Birthday parties, and times when impressing the neighbours could happen. "Good evening vicar, I'll just UNLOCK! this door and remove this (shwoom) cloth from the sofa, sorry it's a bit chilly.. um,"

.. and you'd not need to switch off the telly as there wasn't one in that room, but he could admire your piano while the tea was brewing.

I'd sneak in there to play the piano, when I was allowed.

If that impressed the neighbours, I have no idea.

That was a beautiful post, Mark. I can see it all quite clearly.

The houses I grew up in had too many rooms for there to be just a "living room."

In one there was the Drawing Room and the Sitting Room, but there was also a Rumpus Room, for children, in another, there was the Morning Room, the Parlour and the Ballroom. That doesn't even count Dining Rooms (which usually became "living" rooms by default) and offices and studies.

I now have one room I sleep and do creative stuff in, and another room I cook, eat and entertain in. Because it's just easier.

another thing I learned about England from nineteenth-century novels & James Bond films is that you name your houses things like "Waverly" & "Locke House" & so I am going to do that with my new house this summer too; suggestions welcome.

Dunroamin'
Shangri-la

It's nearly as Common to name your own house as it is to buy your own furniture!

our living room was "the lounge" by default when i was a kid

― Kony Montana: "Say hello to my invisible friend" (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 15 March 2012 11:42 (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

As I 'intimated', we basically kept to one room for the most part, why heat a room you didn't need?

(t'was all coal in them days)...

The upstairs bedrooms had the convected heat from the living room.

I still find it funny when they do 'scene setting' in dramas based in the 1950s, and it's pretty much like our place was in 1967 or thereabouts.

What is a Keeping Room?

In city brownstones and/or row-houses, the "parlor floor" is the most decorated and main entrance floor, meant for receiving non-family members and visitors and basically the public setting of the house. There would be additional living rooms/reading rooms/sitting rooms upstairs for the family to use when there weren't guests.

My childhood reading has firmly instilled the word "parlor" in my imagination as a place with horsehair furniture (I don't even know what this means?) and antimacassars, where the drapes are always drawn.

Supper is kind of a frontier word, here, I think?

So, git out the way for old Dan Tucker,
He's too late to git his supper.
Supper's over and breakfast is cookin',
Old Dan Tucker jus' stands there lookin'.

Supper comes from 'souper', literally 'to soup' and it was the last collation of the day but not heavy like dinner which is the day's main eating event.

Den is a great word, and evocative of a period in the late '80s, where everybody put a bar in their basement and bought a neon MIller sign and a projection TV and wood panels for the wall and a puke colored carpet.

xxp to Laurel - the Tucker/supper rhyme reminds me of this:

Little Tommy Tucker
Sings for his supper
What shall we give him?
White bread and butter

How shall he cut it
Without a knife?
How will he be married
Without a wife?

Have no idea at all what that last verse means

Remy, I feel like that den predates the late 80's by at least 20 years.

Little 'Tommy Tucker' referred to in the words of this nursery rhyme was a colloquial term that was commonly used to describe orphans - Little Tommy Tucker . The orphans were often reduced to begging or 'singing for their supper'. The reference to Little Tommy Tucker marrying and the lack of a wife reflects the difficulty of any orphan being able to marry due to their exceptionally low standing within the community. The first publication date for Little Tommy Tucker was 1829.

Pinch of salt but this feels accurate.

Having a den like that is a life's ambition that I formed when I was 5 and never questioned. nb I still do not have a den. or a basement for that matter.

a report from the upper midwest of america:

the divided rooms up here would often be called "living room" (piano, presentation furniture) and "family room" (crap furniture big tv)

i say dinner. i have knowledge of "supper" but i dont think ive ever heard anyone actually use it that is under 90.

actually amend that, anyone under 70 without deep deep nordic roots. the elder up north swede/norwegian contingent holds onto supper iirc

Oh my god, this thread has left new exponentially more confused than when I started it.

are non-british people allowed to vote in this poll

I love "supper clubs" btw

i forgot that we had a "family room". i guess other people might have called it a den.

Euler you elitist

yeah, we called ours the family room, much better than den imo b/c does not connote bears waiting in hiding to maul you

haha "supper clubs" in the midwest are like smoke-ridden wood-paneled 50s surf & turf joints where if you're not AARP you aren't with it

We had a basement, as the living room and kitchen were knocked together. Only a couple of feet lower than the street so not at all dingy. We also had a sun room and a conservatory and a front room. We were considerably less well-to-do than all this sounds.

I'm with you on that, ledge.

much better than den imo b/c does not connote bears waiting in hiding to maul you

lols

I think my attempts to rename our rooms might be aiming for ledge-style haughtiness - we have a Long Room, a Library, a Dressing Room and a Wash Room. Own brand Cleudo to follow idc.

"I think it waaaaaaaaas... Ismael Klata... in the... Long Room... with the... er... bear claws!"

Cluedo had a 'secret passage' too iirc - I'd kill for one of those.

http://gluten-freeyummies.com/uploads/2/7/0/8/2708682/6829355_orig.jpg

Not a bad way to go, imo.

A gluten free death!

midday meal = lunch (but "school dinners")
evening meal = dinner (supper is what old people in folk stories eat. tea is a drink to me, or something people have at about 4pm in cafe rooms by the sea).

ha i was gonna bring up "pudding", i totally use it to mean dessert

― Kony Montana: "Say hello to my invisible friend" (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 15 March 2012 10:55 (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"pudding" is correct. "dessert" is for pseuds and "sweet" is just ugh... fuck off now.

Grew up with a "sitting room" containing a "settee". Now I'd use "living room" and "sofa". Don't know why I changed; to fit in at secondary school/university, I suppose.

and I've only lived in houses with one living room, but a few relatives had the big comfy sitting room with TV and stuff everywhere in the back, small cold posh front room (just called the Front Room or the Parlour if you're v. Victorian) with uncomfortable bolt-upright chairs and a display cabinet of small antiquey trinkets.

The Victorian houses in Belfast are confusing in this respect, they have a posh guests' front room and a sitting room but they're both at the front, on either side of the front door - I think traditionally you have one side of the front garden as a lawn so people can see your posh room through the window, and grow shrubs and bushes on the other side so you can have a private sitting room

(when did we change from showing off your best things to the street to hiding them away in case passers-by think "those things are nice, I'll break in"? not that I know which is worse)

My grandmother used to call dinner "supper" but my parents much more rarely (New Jersey).

If the evening meal is called supper, you might not understand Red Buttons' immortal "He never got a dinner" routine.

One of the weirdest things about moving from CA to MS in the 70s was the occasional shift of language out from under my feet, like breakfast-lunch-dinner becoming breakfast-dinner-supper.

"dessert" is for pseuds

!!

"you can't have your pudding if you don't finish your tea" is basically the key statement of this poll, i must've heard it a thousand times as a kid

― Kony Montana: "Say hello to my invisible friend" (Noodle Vague), Thursday, March 15, 2012 10:56 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tea=main evening meal
anything eating a few hours after=snack

The exception in my house was Sunday where lunch-time (1pm) would mean a roast dinner

I grew up with breakfast dinner and tea; when I moved away to college it became breakfast lunch tea (I copped hell from my family for putting on airs); and now that I'm a yankee it's breakfast lunch and dinner.

I always thought of supper as a later-evening snack kind of meal, cheese and crackers or somesuch. not a full meal, sort of a meal-annex, lol

Isn't a lot of this down to u and non-u english?

I always thought of supper as a later-evening snack kind of meal, cheese and crackers or somesuch. not a full meal, sort of a meal-annex, lol

Several of my relatives have this fourth meal and also call it 'supper'.

has anyone ever heard someone use "lunch" to mean a light snack, at any time of day?

No. I've heard people use 'Brunch' to describe a non-brunch mid morning snack. Maybe a trend could be started for 'tunch', a mid-afternoon snack between lunch and tea.

i did know a dude that would say things like "i might just lunch on something before we meet up" but i just kinda assumed he was sorta mentally infirm

I will say either, but I have a marked preference for "supper", bcz it was what my dad said most of the time.

I use "lunch" for midday meal, but occasionally call it "dinner" (evidence for midday meal being dinner = school dinner ladies). I use "tea" for evening meal, but occasionally call that "dinner" too. So I guess dinner to me just means some kind of meal. Supper is a magical fantasy land meal.

My family had two living rooms, but they were just called "the big living room" and "the small living room".

Also, how do you call Batman in for his tea?

:D

I say either, regardless of the circumstances.

I guess this isn't 100% true though because I would never say "I'm going out for supper". My parents say "supper" so it's possible that I'm more used to it than most Canadians? I've been living in Saskatchewan since September (not that that means that much) and have never heard of this btw: In Saskatchewan, and much of Nova Scotia, in Canada, "supper" means the main meal of the day, usually served in the late afternoon, while "dinner" is served around noon. I can't imagine this being a real thing in Regina/Saskatoon. Maybe in some rural town where they talk like the Mackenzie Brothers.

Also, I didn't know that French people (from France) don't say "souper"! What do they call the evening meal in France?

Oh, is it "petit dejeuner", "dejeuner", "diner"?

Also, how do you call Batman in for his tea?

I want to know the answer to this!

"dinner dinner dinner dinner dinner dinner dinner dinner Batman!!!!!"

Oh, and using "tea" for a meal is blowing my mind. Seriously, WTF, England?

I'm guessing it just expanded from the fancy afternoon tea meal to be any meal, and then contracted again into meaning the evening meal. These things happen.

Also, <3 NV.

Oh, is it "petit dejeuner", "dejeuner", "diner"?

And then souper afterwards. Let's all remember that before electricity and kerosene ppl got up early and went to bed early. If you're up at 5:00 and the day is warm, you break your fast early, eat a family meal in the early afternoon and have a light, warming meal, possibly soup in many places, before retiring to bed at (in northern climes) at 8:00 or thereabouts. I don't know anyone who uses souper in France. It sounds like French onion soup you take your white gloves off to eat after a night at the Opera.

In my family dinner was a special occasion or going out, supper was something eaten in the early evening quite possibly in front of the TV. I don't think I had brunch until I was in my late teens and even then only with women and gay friends.

The pudding thing in England (a)reminds me of my preference for French dessert and (b) constitutes another example of two peoples divided by a common language. Also, tea as a meal is the kind of thing you got to a fancy hotel for at 4PM. I can't imagine having 'tea' as my last meal of the day.

(I guessed that, emil.y. Was being goofy.)

btw, we never did call it 'sweet' though my mother wanted us to.

We plumped for "after" as in "What's for after?"

to my Yank ears, "supper" sounds like something they'd say on "little house on the prairie." once again, the American-British cultural divide rears its head :D

You've not included 'tea', which is what working class northerners in the UK call it.

lol my immediate reaction after seeing the thread.

I say "avondmaal" cause I am flemish. lol

I always thought tea was a negligible, in-between snack-time when you just have, well, tea.

I came here for an argument about dinner vs. supper here it's all tea and pudding what the hell why don't we just all wear tri-cornered hats and talk about the aristocracy for christ's sake

Wtf there is nothing wrong with tea or pudding, both are genius whichever meanings you favour.

Except 'merican pudding, which sounds like it might be a bit like blancmange, which is yuk.

oh god that reminds of also additionally copping it from family when I started asking for dessert vs pudding. You would have thought I had come home wearing a beret.

I was just today reading this passage in Edith Wharton, which encompasses four meals:

Everything amused her: the long hours of bargaining and debate with dress-makers and jewellers, the crowded lunches at fashionable restaurants, the perfunctory dash through a picture-show or the lingering visit to the last new milliner; the afternoon motor-rush to some leafy suburb, where tea and musics and sunset were hastily absorbed on a crowded terrace above the Seine; the whirl home through the Bois to dress for dinner and start again on the round of evening diversions; the dinner at the Nouveau Luxe or the Café de Paris, and the little play at the Capucines or the Variétés, followed, because the night was "too lovely," and it was a shame to waste it, by a breathless flight back to the Bois, with supper in one of its lamp-hung restaurants, or, if the weather forbade, a tumultuous progress through the midnight haunts where "ladies" were not supposed to show themselves, and might consequently taste the thrill of being occasionally taken for their opposites.

I like tea and pudding, one has nothing to do with dinner or supper and the other is something you eat at dinner...or at supper if you are wrong and evil

that lady should eat a good breakfast

whenever I talk about tea and pudding and supper Mr Veg gets all "and you mustn't forget second breakfast" with me.

But then again, my family pretty strictly observed morning and afternoon tea as well as the main meals. The amount of coffee/tea consumed in our house is pretty ridic. But I miss it SO much!

My whole family always said "lunch" for the noontime meal and "dinner" for the evening meal, except for my Dad who said "dinner" and "supper", respectively. It still causes confusion, especially when he's talking about dinner and it's 11 AM, we're all like "but that's hours from now!" His mother was from Canada, though, so maybe that's why? Also, he grew up on a farm in a really small town.

tea = not posh
dinner = posher
supper = proper posh

Aye, get the fish suppers in then, lad.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

From the Grauniad Politics section today:

"We don't seem to realise that a lot of the people we need to vote for us have dinner at lunchtime and tea at dinner time" one Tory said

My parents often (but not exclusively) said "supper" instead of "dinner" when I was a kid, but now I almost never say it. It does have a slightly old-fashioned/rural connotation to me, like something the Joad family would say.

midday meal = "lunch"
midday meal out at a restaurant = "lunch"
evening meal = "tea"
evening meal out at a restaurant = "dinner"

Yep, same here kind of, although I do say dinner to mean lunch sometimes. Confusing when discussing with non-Brits. Never heard of supper until my Dad started using it to refer to cheese and crackers he ate before bed and I was all "What! A whole other meal I never knew about?!"
We always called dessert 'pudding', but I thought my husband was well posh when I first met him and he called it 'afters'.

yep, pudding here too

guh I guess my family are more Britisher than I knew :)

now that i think of it, my parents sometimes say supper. but my Mom is a Brit and my Dad is corny.

three cheers for corny dadd

it still sounds like something that the characters on little house on the prairie would say, though. strongest evidence of corny that i can think of.

anyone still say elevenses?
no idea what they are but I like the word

they are biscuits and marmalade and cocoa eaten with mr. gruber at 11am

mr gruber

Won't you ruin lunch if you eat at 11 though?

One of the weirdest things about moving from CA to MS in the 70s was the occasional shift of language out from under my feet, like breakfast-lunch-dinner becoming breakfast-dinner-supper.

― Carlos Pollomar (WmC), Thursday, March 15, 2012 9:56 AM

this is the most surprising thing itt. i'd always assumed that lunch/dinner/supper confusion was exclusive to the UK and that america ran exclusively on a noonish lunch and an evening dinner (with "supper" being an old-timey/regional variant on the latter).

also a bit mortified to learn this late in life that the english "tea" is sometimes a full, late evening meal. i'd somehow understood it to refer exclusively to the mid-afternoon snack.

As I'd said way up thread a lot of Aussies say "tea" to mean dinner too. Dinner at home, not out.

it still sounds like something that the characters on little house on the prairie would say, though. strongest evidence of corny that i can think of.

ha! My dad calls it "supper" and he used to pretend he was on the Waltons when he put us to bed. "Why do you keep calling us Jim-Bob at bedtime, dad?"
All you have to do to get him fired up is remind him about something Nellie Olsen once did. "Dad, remember when Nellie Olsen had that voice recording machine?" "That little bitch!"
So, corny and supper, hand in hand.
"Supper" for the evening meal is a-ok but calling lunch "dinner" makes my brain melt.

in maine, where my mom lives, a lot of churches and schools host "bean suppers" as a community-building fund raiser. everybody gets together and enjoys big plates of beans (and corn and salad and bread and so on) in a communal/cafeteria setting. maine is the only place i know in america where "supper" is the common name for the evening meal. it sounds good with a down east accent, too. "suppah"

i say dinner because it's easier than saying "supper"

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

My parents and grandparents still say "supper" and my grandmother used to call a lunchbox a "dinner pail." (She also calls denim jeans "dungarees.") I say breakfast, lunch, dinner, desert, snack.

I kind of like calling dinner at home "tea." it's cozy sounding.

EDB

Elevenses Dinner Breakfast?