Having ‘a cuppa’

Because I had never seen or heard of anything other than fish and chips (and deep fried Mars Bar) in a chip shop! Probably battered sausage and haggis existed.

But still, in my head , if someone is going to a chippy they are getting fish and chips.

Why did it surprise you?

I remember being really genuinely startled when I came to England that people had things other than fish and chips ( and deep fried Mars Bars) from a chip shop.

Brilliant! My gran would have the vapours!

That song Lunch by Billie Eillish gets on my nerves. Maybe because it makes me hungry, or the word lunch sounds weird sung by an American

Chip supper in Glasgow. Which is really confusing!

Totally normal here in S yorkshire

Well I assume you’re Southern to me if by Northern you mean north England. I don’t understand why they tell their partner / family that they are confined to ordering fish and chips from the chippy establishment.

I need my green tablets and my fainting couch please nurse. Panties indeed. I have also noticed an increasing tendency for US authors to use the generic term underwear when they mean knickers. As in " my underwear lay on the sheepskin rug where he had ripped them from my desperate body" . Or " she towelled her lithe body dry and stepped into her silky underwear" Maybe I am reading the wrong sort of books.

Nowt to do with posh! I said upthread my MIL said din-dins and she came from a massive mining family in Denaby Pit Village!

But “fish and chips”, “sausage and chips” etc is a specific order? So “takeaway fish, sausage, scampi, haggis, pizza, black pudding, white pudding or pie and chips”?

I love a chippy tea (yes ‘tea’ as I’m northern 😂)

Maybe they say “should we have fish and chippy chips’? 🤷‍♀️🤦‍♀️😂

Ok that’s very specific to you. If you knew someone that both cooked fish and chips and got them from a chippy, and if you don’t wish to specify what order those in your family might want from the chippy (fish, sausage, scampi, haggis etc) surely “chippy tea” is the correct descriptor?

Yes!

I had to stop reading anything Martin Lewis wrote because of his infuriating way of shortening everything and chocs just makes me think of him. Choccy is even worse and it just makes people look so thick.

We've variously said all of "dinner", "supper" and "tea", depending on mood and frame of mind. I'm from a Southern English, MC background but my OH is working class Northern Irish by background, although he's lived in both the North and the South of England over many years.

It really doesn't matter. We don't do ourselves any favours as a nation by being so pathetically fussy about this, like something out of the Mitford era. Live and let live.

Oh Haha. Just remembered my dad said 'din dins'. There's one for you OP!

That must come from posh childhoods. (his dad was a motorbike mechanic as it goes but my gran tried to pretend otherwise- presumably by sending my dad to a fee paying school where people said din dins for evening meals.)

My cousin's husband died the other week way before his time and the funeral was last week. He came from Wigan.

We went out to the sound of I Want A Chippy Tea by the Lancashire Hotpots. The food at the wake was a Chippy Tea. It was teatime, too.

I now live south-ish. I say tea , my children say tea and my DH (brought up in Wales with parents from London) says tea. It's pretty widespread.

Supper on the other hand is not as widespread and is for posh people and people form Edinburgh (who are often posh by default) like my stepmother and my dad who is a posh Geordie but only started saying supper when he married the Edinburgh woman to my knowledge.

I read a book once that explained basically that the elite kept their place in society by eating later than their workers - to me , posh people eat quite late.

This is all complicated by my American DM who called everything whatever.

The word was my point…if they don’t use the word I don’t know which it is. I was wondering why the word irritates you when it’s so useful. But you’ve said it’s irrational, so I guess that’s answered.

I'd ask for a pint of lager.

Otherwise I might be given a pint of bitter or cider.

Tea (as in food) in the evening here too. I am enjoying the usual southern English patrolling of threads to declare their version correct.

I very much enjoyed the TV show 'Back In Time for Tea' which hung on an understanding that this meant around 5pm.

My ex MIL repeats cuppa teeeeaaaa multiple times in a cockney accent. Nooiccceeee cuppa teeeeea.

We are not cockney. We are not even English.

It drove me around the absolute BEND.

Would you ask for “a pint”?

I'm from the West!

I thought it was more the Highlands to be honest. I think it's also a Nordic version of 'hospitality' although slightly less brusque.

What word would you use? It’s surely just descriptive, which isn’t the same as “cuppa”, “hubby” etc?