To hate the word "pudding?"

[Misswrite89]

I hate it when people use the word pudding instead of dessert. AIBU?

"Dessert" is actually a fruit course. "Pudding" is what you have with custard. People say "dessert" because they mistakenly think it sounds posh. It's not. "Pudding" is the posh word.

Where I live there's been a crop of 'dessert parlours' and 'dessert lounges' (the actual fuck?) popping up.

I'd rather go to a 'pudding lounge', it sounds lovely and slovenly

I love all the different perceptions.

I see supper as definitely working class though, it's what you have before you go to bed, when you had your tea at about 5/5.30pm.

Dinner is mc, you have it much later, so no need for supper.

Pudding. Preferably treacle!

Indians - love your Pudding

we have pudding (I am working class, but with an older and old-fashioned mother, which gave her speech a bit of a U flavour)

MIL is basically all of John Betjeman's nightmares personified, and has dessert, which follows tea, for which one needs a serviette and some doilies.

my kids make me laugh with their subconscious code-switching - they come back from a weekend at MIL's talking about dessert, and then fade back to pudding.

I see supper as definitely working class though, it's what you have before you go to bed, when you had your tea at about 5/5.30pm.

DEFINITELY. I was brought up as working-class as they come, and we had tea at 5.30 and a little bit of supper before bed.

Must try an orange. Can do grapes and peaches. Banana easy peasy.

So who provides a savory any more?

Where I come from (up North) supper is a small snack before bed such as toast. Nigella Lawson uses it to describe what I'd call 'tea'.

buttermilk, that's supper for me too. I spent some of my childhood up north but some in the south of England, but we had supper everywhere we lived –it's a class thing as much as/more than a geographical thing IMO.

'supper' for the evening meal is pretty posh, I think. I say dinner now that I seem to have become a bit middle-class, but supper would be a bridge too far.

Exactly Buttermilk!
I don't much like the word 'pudding' either, it conjures up images of stodgy stuff like Spotted Dick and steamed suet pudding that I'm not keen on anyway.
Dessert is much lighter, but you wouldn't have a yoghurt for 'dessert' - 'afters' is a much more generic term!

Pudding is the word for the sweet course no matter what sort: an actual suet pudding, ice cream, tart etc.

Dessert is a fruit course at the very end.

But the word dessert meaning the sweet course has probably come from America and is being used a lot, especially in restaurants, perhaps because pudding sounds stodgy and dessert sounds fancy and delicate. So it is a bit of a euphemism to make the sweet course sound more special.

Restaurants probably don't like 'pudding' incase it sounds like something from a (disgusting to my mind, delicious to another's) British school dinner of old - for example dead man's leg, semolina with skin and lumps and a blob of jam all swimming in Bird's custard with skin and lumps! So dessert word has often been exchanged for pudding more recently.

Dessert comes from the French 'desservir' meaning to clear the table. After the clearing the fruit came. Petit fours, tiny bite sized cakes or macaroons, or a chocolate, could come with coffee like a piece of chocolate at an even later stage.

I love this type of thread.

My pet hate is sweeties with pudding eg icecream with chunks of fudge, smarties or chocolate sauce, mini-marshmallows and a curled wafer thing (biscuit innit); pudding and sweeties. Wrong and bad. Same with things like caramel-apple crumble with custard. No.

That doesn't add up, almostenglish, because in Scotland the evening meal is always tea or dinner, usually dinner, but I know plenty - myself included - who would have "pudding" afterwards but definitely aren't posh.
Agree. I know about the U non-U thing but I'm not Nancy Mitford. She probably did it as a joke anyway. The Mitford sisters probably looked down on the royal family as being common. Where's Nicky Haslam when you need him?

Where are people getting their sure and certain knowledge from on this topic?

The dictionary definition of desert is not "a fruit course at the end of a meal" it is "sweet food eaten at the end of a meal according to the Cambridge Dictionary online here and the Oxford Dictionary online [http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/dessert here]] with the origin given being 16th century from the French past participle of desservir 'clear the table' - nothing to do with fruit.

I am with the OP in disliking the word "pudding" because to me it is a nursery word, infantile, babyish... but words have associations which are different for different people - other people would say it is more upper class by the twisted logic of being less try hard/ formal perhaps but all of that is debatable and really it depends who is saying it and whether it is natural or affected! I associate the word "pudding" with the kind of adults who tell other adults they are "going for a wee" instead of saying nothing or saying they are going to the toilet... it falls into that realm of infantile language choice for me - not for others, depends on your history with the word I guess!

I also use desert because for my kids growing up abroad immersed in a different language and culture "pudding" is a very specific blancmange type insipid instant desert...

I'd have said supper was a late evening light meal but would have said it was upper not working class - supper clubs try to be upper class don't they...

However saying supper when you mean the main meal of the day at 6pm is just wrong, regardless of class IMO :o

Lunch at lunch time (obviously)
Tea is a children's meal optionally taken at about 5pm if children eat separately
Dinner in the early evening (6 or 7pm, maybe a bit later)
Supper if necessary in the very late evening, perhaps after the theatre...

Supper for posh people is an informal evening meal as opposed to a smart dinner.

Supper for plebs (like moi) is a snack in the evening after dinner.

YANBU- I HATE the word 'pudding' :shudders:

MsBojangles that's interesting I hadn't realised there was a difference between a posh person's supper and dinner.

I avoid saying both pudding and dessert as I don't feel comfortable with them for some reason. If I'm offering it to someone I'd say the actual food so "would you like some apple pie?"
I'm aware that I'm strange.

Pudding is perfectly good northern dialect.

Personally I hate people who add Rs in the middle of words that don't exist.

BaRth

Fuck off

In the US, supper is not a posh word at all. It means an informal evening meal. I grew up in the Southern US where the noon meal, especially on Sunday, was often called dinner. The evening meal would be supper.

I hate the word 'supper'. It's tea if it's before 6.15 and dinner after (northern).

Yes we had Sunday dinner and Christmas dinner in the middle of the day. And school dinners of course!

YABU.

Pudding is a fab word - homely and comforting. We always have pudding after us tea

From The Oxford English Dictionary The Definitive Record of the English Language
(On-line resource from library)
Dessert
Etymology: < French dessert (Estienne 1539) ‘removal of the dishes, dessert’, < desservir to remove what has been served, to clear (the table), < des-, Latin dis- + servir to serve.

a. A course of fruit, sweetmeats, etc. served after a dinner or supper; ‘the last course at an entertainment’ (Johnson).

b. ‘In the United States often used to include pies, puddings, and other sweet dishes’ ( Cent. Dict.). Now also in British usage.

Dinner
The chief meal of the day, eaten originally, and still by the majority of people, about the middle of the day (cf. German Mittagsessen), but now, by the professional and fashionable classes, usually in the evening; particularly, a formally arranged meal of various courses; a repast given publicly in honour of some one, or to celebrate some event.

Supper
The last meal of the day; (contextually) the time at which this is eaten, supper time. Also: the food eaten at such a meal. Often without article, demonstrative, possessive, or other modifier.
The time and style of ‘supper’ varies according to history, geography, and social factors. For much of its history, ‘supper’ was simply the last of three daily meals (breakfast, dinner, and supper), whether constituting the main meal or not. In the United States, ‘supper’ is now a less frequent synonym for ‘dinner’ as the evening meal. Where both ‘supper’and ‘dinner’ can be applied to the last of three meals, supper is often a lighter or less formal affair than dinner (though see sense 2b). Where four meals a day are recognized, ‘supper’ is a light late meal or snack following an early evening dinner or a late afternoon or early evening ‘tea’.

In America a lot of people have always said supper.