..to wonder why everyone refers to the evening meal the kids have as 'tea' not 'dinner'?

[Tweettwo]

We don't live up North so why call it 'tea'?

I find it funny to hear lunch calld dinner.
I think of dinner as a hot, plated meal eaten in the early evening.
My yorkshire friend calls dinner "tea" even if we are out at a restaurant, which sounds hilarious, and a bit childish.

Im in the South west. We have breakfast, dinner and tea

Oh and 'going out for your tea' means going for a pub meal, something casual: 'lets have tea out tonight' my mum would say. But going to a proper restaurant in the evening would always be going out for dinner.

I only imagine going out for dinner as a date as in Ali McBeal, Friends etc People in them are always being asked out for dinner, usually as if the woman is doing the man a huge favour by going.

Therefore we go out for tea, or if it's a bit more special an occasion it would be going out for a meal - even if it's the same time, same place and same food! Though we may have pudding too if we're out for a meal. Out for tea only ds gets a pud as his are cheaper. Sometimes I order a cheap pudding too off the child's menu if I can get away with it. I say they're both for him.

The main meal of the day is dinner, whether this is in the middle of the day or evening time. The 'other' meal is lunch or tea depending on what time of the day it is. Midlands area.

Breakfast, dinner and tea.

But you can have packed lunch at midday and you can also have afternoon tea in our house. Double standards here.

According to DH it's
Breakfast
Dinner
Tea.

After a debate over it he said what do they call it at school -it's dinner time, they call them dinner ladies, not lunch ladies!

My dad was originally from up north so says it's breakfast, dinner, tea.

To me, having lived in the south all my life, I say breakfast, lunch, dinner. 'Tea' to me implies afternoon tea/late lunch/a snack, not the final evening meal.

My in laws say 'breakfast, tea/lunch, supper' and for some reason this makes me shudder.

Always tea here (South), dinner maybe as going out for dinner or having (adult) friends for dinner, usually tea though.

Lunch is sometimes lunch unless it is at school, then it must be dinner or hot, then it is usually dinner !!!

Interestingly my Australian friend uses 'tea' as a snack, so 'morning tea' would be a mid morning snack.

Breakfast
Lunch or Dinner
Tea or Dinner

South Wales

Quite partial to Brunch and a midnight feast too though (clearly just love meals).

Breakfast, lunch and either supper (single course), or dinner (multi course).

In our household,

Breakfast at breakfasttime
Dinner (if hot) / lunch (if child) at lunchtime
Tea (if small and/or for a child) / dinner (if large and/or hot) at dinnertime

That sounds unnecessary complicated but it makes sense to us!

sorry:

lunch (if cold)

Breakfast
Lunch - middle of the day
Tea - what DD has after school matches or when she gets home (eaten about 6pm)
Dinner - what we have (usually between 7 and 8)

Some of our smarter friends call Dinner "Supper" but we find that pretentious.

Breakfast
Dinner
Tea

In the South West and it's always been that way for me.

Tea is about 4oclock and dinner is at eight hence on a school night the kids have tea and we have dinner, at the weekends we all have dinner or if we have a late lunch we have supper which is a simple light meal around nine o'clock

As a child, breakfast, lunch and tea but my parents went out for/had friends round for dinner. As a teenager, breakfast ,lunch and dinner but when talking to friends lunch became dinner and dinner tea. Now, breakfast, lunch and dinner but if the DC eat their evening meal really early at 5pm ish without any adults, that's tea.

breakfast
dinner
tea

im north west and that ^ is how its always been.

We have breakfast, lunch and tea

midlander gone southern

Breakfast
Dinner*
Tea (not dinner or supper. Supper is a glass of warm milk and two malted sports biscuits)

*Although under influence of southern wife I have occasionally slipped into referring it as lunch, which it absolutely bloody isn't.

Breakfast
Lunch
Tea

From Lancs.

Happy to replace 'tea' with 'dinner' on occasion but couldn't tell you what those occasions were, or how much it was southern influence from uni days, or TV influence, etc.

what a weird thread. "everyone" doesn't do this - I don't - and even if they did, so what?

I once made a faux pas about this. I live in the Midlands where it's lunch and dinner. I told my MIL, who lives in the NE, that we would arrive at hers around dinnertime. She cooked us a large roast dinner which was ready about 1pm. We arrived around 6pm.. to much flapping and wondering where we had got to. ooops. I blame DH for not translating the message!

For me its interchangeable, which confuses the kids no end!

I guess thats cos I'm from the north, so it was breakfast-dinner-tea, but now I'm in Cambridgeshire and its breakfast-lunch-dinner. (we had dinner ladies at school - do they have lunch-ladies in the south? (or lunch-men for that matter!)
School club also do 'tea' which is a snack at around 4.15pm which can indeed lead to confusion when the kids are offered 'tea' and they've already had it.
As long as I feed them it doesn't really matter!