Having ‘a cuppa’

If dh is having lunch with people in work in an organised way we call it luncheon. We read a biography a few years ago which involved a lot of luncheon.
A luncheon meat sandwich is lunch...if it still exists.

YES! My mother-in-law, who is an 87-year-old posho, says luncheon and also drawing room!!! To be fair, the drawing room in her last home was absolutely a drawing room, very grand proportions, but her current one is much smaller, and she probably doesn't call it that. I'm separated from her son, so haven't seen her in ages.

P.S. I think she uses luncheon to mean a lunch party or a daytime event where lunch is served. As in, "The gardening day at Wisley includes a luncheon." I don't think she uses it to mean soup and a sandwich at home.

It's not at all twee to me. It's not a recent thing like 'holibobs' or 'Crimbo'. My grandparents used to say it and they were cockneys born in the 1910s.

I'm a Londoner who lives in Manchester. My northern colleagues say 'a brew', I say 'a cuppa'.

I also constantly 'put the kettle on' because I drink about eight mugs of tea a day.

If you find it annoying, so be it. I'll live.

See to me Fish shop would be an establishment that sells live fish for keeping in tanks or ponds

Breakfast
Second Breakfast
Elevensies
Luncheon
Afternoon tea
Dinner
Supper

Does anyone actually say LUNCHEON anymore? 😂

YANBU it's a brew

Argh we call our evening meal tea. So does everyone I know?! “What’s for tea” etc. some Americans we knew were baffled by this !

@ForCosyLion as much as I enjoyed that, I came from the North, like supper according to you .... And while I greatly appreciate the southern blouse = supper thing, I only call lunch lunch because my parents weren't from where I grew up..... North east is def breakfast, dinner and tea and optional supper.

Lunchtime school staff are dinner nannies where I'm from! I used dinner and tea fairly interchangeably.

Actual high tea baffles me. When you see a costume drama I feel like they never stop eating. Breakfast lunch tea dinner or is it supper...way too many meals.

Only in the up-itself parts of London and the Home Counties. Supper came from the north, and means a light snack shortly before bed. Supper is NOT any kind of meal! Snack only. Calling a meal eaten at dinnertime, light or otherwise, supper, means you're a soft Southern blouse. Makes me see red. 🤣 Supper is eaten no earlier than 10pm and is just a light bite, always cold, and a hot drink. How does everyone not KNOW this! 🤭 I find it greatly upsetting.

I don't mean to be a reverse snob, but it's only pretentious twats from some parts of the south-east who call their evening meal supper. The idea is that "dinner" is a formal event in your ancestral dining room and involves the whole tiaras-for-married women rigmarole. To distinguish between the formal dinner that you doubtless have two or three times a week, entertaining local dignitaries and fellow aristos, you refer to the meal on regular evenings as supper, lest Cook get confused and think that on Thursday, the hordes are coming, when actually you only need a fish pie for four. The aristos probably got the idea from their workers who called their bedtime snack supper. They needed a bedtime snack because they were manual workers who had their main meal at midday, so they just had tea when they got home - by which I mean sandwiches etc, not anything hot! THAT's why they had a bedtime snack, called supper, because they hadn't had anything every substantial since midday.

And then the twats and wannabes of today continue to refer to the evening meal, the main meal of the day, as supper, because they think it sounds posh to differentiate between formal dinners and regular meal nights. It doesn't; for the people who actually know what meals are meant to be called, it sounds completely and utterly pretentious, unless you actually ARE an aristocrat who holds formal dinners twice a week.

Even Louis XIV knew that you don't have supper before 10pm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supper

When someone refers to supper when they mean dinner, I want to rip their arm off and beat them about the head with it, although I don't get worked up about it.

For those in the cheap seats, it's like this:
Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner
Supper (maybe)
Tea - sandwiches, cakes etc. and cups of tea - is usually only served around 5pm at the weekends now. If you're an aristocrat who doesn't work and hosts formal dinners, you might have afternoon tea at 4 with sandwiches during the week, as you might not be eating till eight.

Let's not go there with people who call their main evening meal tea.

I can! Your meal names are all wrong. Why don't you just go the whole hog and call your evening meal breakfast and your breakfast dinner, since you're getting it all wrong anyway! 🤭🤣 First thing in the morning, you could have a lovely dinner of toast and cereal; then tea at midday of soup or sandwiches; and then sometime 5pm-8pm, a nice hot breakfast of chicken breasts, potatoes and vegetables. And then elevenses at 11pm. 🤪 Would make the same amount of sense! 🤭🤭🤭

When I briefly had Welsh lessons I learnt that 'Ti'n isio paned?' literally translates to 'do you want a cuppa?' Paned = cup (common) Cwpanaid = cupful (formal).

I use cuppa, or brew without cringe.

IKR - it's quite extreme to be infuriated by people who call a lighter meal later in the day supper. It's a recognised meaning of supper.

They are in my house 🤷‍♀️.

If we eat around 5-6, it’s tea; if we eat around 8, it’s supper.

If it’s a large meal, it’s dinner (but we rarely have a large meal in the evening, unless we go out).

You can’t tell other people how to name their meals 😂.

AAAAAARRRRGH NOOOOOOOO!

I worked with someone who used to offer her boss "a cup". Maximum shudder.

People round here say "mash" for making tea, as in "are you mashing?", or have you mashed yet?"

I heard someone say they were just nipping into the shop to get some “brew bags” today after reading this thread and had to come back to post because I knew some people on here would understand my feelings of sheer rage 😆.

I think the woman who I overheard needs locking up for crimes against humanity for using such an irritating phrase.

I am northern and hear people constantly offering or asking for a “brew” but it’s the first time I’ve heard someone say “brew bags”.
I don’t drink hot drinks and agree with others on the thread who don’t partake in this annoying ritual and find it frustrating that people are such slaves to a kettle.
I rarely have coffee or tea at home but have a big variety of soft drinks. People act like I’m depriving them of something that keeps them alive by the way they react!

Yes - the whole point is that most of these annoyances are very personal and completely illogical!

It's the same with words that people hate - it's not prejudice or judging, just a weird personal thing. One of my pet hates is longer/more complicated words being used when a simpler, shorter version is available. I don't like 'purchase' when 'buy' will do, or 'prior to' instead of 'before'. But that's just me!

Sometimes the longer word is necessary - if it has a specific or technical meaning - but on the whole I think it's better stylistically to use simpler, shorter words.

I tried this once, kitchen was a mess especially after I whacked it all in the oven

A nice cuppa tea , always offered by my beautiful Welsh nan. Had to be in a china cup and saucer too .

A wee cup of tea in your hand in Northern Ireland might come with a traybake but it isn't your tea!
Northern Irelands main annoyance is wee. Put the wee card in the wee machine and put in your wee pin number. Do you want a wee bag ? Take your wee card and do you want a wee receipt?

Fascinating thread. Full of the usual snobbery, ignorance, prejudices and humour that I come to Mumsnet for!

My take from this is that some southern English people say 'cuppa' and some Northern English people say 'brew'. We Scots mostly don't say either, but will say 'a cup o' tea' which might sound like cuppa but isn't the intention. The 'tea' part is almost always there.

My granny used to say 'tassie o' tea' (old Scots word for cup) and I sometimes say this to wind up the DC.

Re. the meal, I've read that the definition of dinner is the main meal of the day, and for workers that was usually midday, to give them sustenance throughout the afternoon's labour. They then had something lighter when work was over, around the time when posh people were having their afternoon tea. This tea-time meal became shortened to just 'tea'. The posh folk had their dinner later in the evening. Supper is defined as the last meal of the day, so that might be your midnight snack, or your dinner, or your tea, if you don't have anything later.

I use all the terms - tea if I'm eating early, supper if I'm eating late, dinner if I'm eating out. A supper (with article) or suppers (plural) if it's from the chippy. (White pudding supper - delicious!)

There's no right or wrong, despite what others declare. To each their own!

What I hate in cooking programmes is the inclusion of redundant prepositions. Ainsley Harriot is particularly bad for this. You don't just cook or boil or fry, you cook or boil up or down, you fry off . . . and on it goes. I mean, why?

Oh, and 'cheeky', when applied to all kinds of things...glasses of wine, knob of butter etc etc - I think Jamie started that!

I like his recipes and I think he plays the Cockney likely lad but is actually a very highly-trained and accomplished chef. So stop with the persona, Jamie!

Doctors are always running late. Even if you have the first appointment.