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

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?