To hate hearing the word SUPPER

[newnameoldme]

Even at my ripe old age I don't know exactly when or what it refers to.

It makes me cringe at the pretentiousness whenever I hear it used. Only slightly less if elderly posh person!

What is the T word?

Breakfast lunch then dinner. Supper is toast of cereal before bed.

It's just a rank word. 'Supper'. Gross.

Not as bad as 'afters' though.

And not as bad as 'picky tea' (booooak).

It just personal preference/subjective but 'picky' in relation to food really grates.

No. That would be supper. Dinner indicates a smart, formal supper. And never lunch*.

That is not right. DInner is a good word for some people's lunch, if that is the only large meal they will have for the day.

Dinner was the name for the main meal of the day. If you have it at night, it does not have to be elaborate to be dinner. That is just current aspirational hidden pretentiousness (a bit like loo) though it is becoming the norm.

If after having dinner, at lunch or at night, you had some other small meal, that was supper.

flying it's rank isn't it? It's because it conjures up a image of someone 'picking' at food which is disgusting.

Yes PF1. Or picking at anything really. But yes food would be really unappetising. I've tried pretending it's a kind of abbreviation for 'picnic' but suspect it's not...

A dinner to me is a larger (often hot) meal with afters. Hence school dinners, Sunday dinner / roast dinner , Christmas dinner all usually in the middle of the day.

It's a regional thing. Where I live we have breakfast, lunch and tea or dinner.
When I was at school (years ago!) we had school dinners not lunch.
As a kid I lived in London and it was breakfast, dinner and tea.
When I visited my Welsh nana we had supper in the evening which was like a late snack.
YABU because it really doesn't matter. Let it go.

The T word is synonymous with a lavatory.

I was always brought up to believe the following
Breakfast when you get up
Eleveness mid morning snack
Lunch butty and crisps at midday
Tea afternoon brew and snack
Dinner main family evening meal
Supper brew and snack before bed

My nana thought she was posh and got the China out for tea

I'm not posh so I have tea for my main family meal

Northern, WC background...Supper is a pre bed/post dinner light snack. DH is Southern and a bit posh...Never had Supper but thinks it is a WC term as in 'fish supper' .

The tea/dinner debate...Dinner in the Bee household,

Thanks OP I actually needed to vent about this.
DP and his family use the S word because they think they are a cut above the rest of us. It's not regional with them.

It's pretentious and I HATE IT.

It's "Tea" round here (WC ex-mining community), from when people would come back from a hard days labour at, or soon after "tea" time, but too hungry for just little sandwiches, and so a full meal would be served at that time. And (so I've read but unsure as to the veracity), it was called "High Tea" if it was the main meal, cos you'd have to eat it at the "high" (dinner) table rather than at a shorter tea table. Although some places have it that it's high as it used to mean "later on", as in it was a bit later than sandwiches and cakes tea.

I nearly wrote "sarnies" instead of "sandwiches" then, that is cringey!

Oh, and like most of the other northerners here, supper is late evening snack, dinner is a nice meal out or kid's school meal.

It always makes me think of Rebekah Brooks and David Cameron and their "country suppers". Shudder.

Yabu.

Working class family here. Supper is a late evening snack. Normally a crumpet or a couple of crackers with cheese.

YANBU

Supper my arse.

Totally pretentious and reminds me very much of the Cameron/Rebecca Brooks "country supper" vomit inducing "in crowd" aspirational clap trap

We have breakfast, lunch and dinner.

My (Irish) parents had breakfast, dinner (main meal always in middle of the day), tea and supper.

For supper they would take turns (well actually dad did it mostly) and would set a tray with tea, crackers, cheese, biscuits or cake. Then they'd have their supper while watching the late news.

They lived a very civilized life really.

Cross post with Jemsy. Agree entirely

Supper is home in the kitchen radio etc Dinner is dining room with guests who don't eat in the kitchen with us

I hate the word supper too. It's like nails on a chalkboard to me. Thankfully it's very rarely used here - certainly not within a domestic situation. Perhaps on a school camp as a late night snack.

I'm not from the UK so I don't have the class hang ups relating to it that some people here do. When I hear it, I envisage it as a light (finger food) late night meal with hot cocoa - something that transcends all classes.

Where I live it's breakfast, lunch, tea/dinner. Anything else is morning or afternoon tea, or a snack.

*By 'here,' I mean this thread; not where I live.

I grew up in a family which proudly described itself as lower middle class (it was a weird pride that worked in both directions - proud to be 'middle class' but also proud to not, in their own perception, have moved too far away from the working class). We had breakfast, dinner if hot and lunch if cold and/or light, tea (but when my parents had friends round in the evening it was dinner), and supper in the 'snack before bed' sense. I now say breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but dinner sometimes gets called supper if it's a little later than usual and/or a particular type of food - perhaps the distinction there is along the lines of my parents' dinner/tea one - we sometimes have a chunky homemade soup with good bread in the evening, or breads/cheeses/antipasti etc, and that is always supper, not dinner. I'd only say tea for an afternoon tea-type thing. Here in Germany the mid-afternoon coffee/cake thing is often just called 'coffee' - as in 'we're having that cake for coffee later'.

I'd never heard the term supper as an actual meal until I bought the Nigella Lawson 'How to Eat' book twenty odd years ago. Where I'm from supper is a glass of milk before bed. For a not terribly big country, the UK has such diverse language. But as I'm from N Ireland there is no angst about words or patterns of speech being class related. I do find that very

Unless it's a fish supper or a sausage supper from the chippy, but that's a whole other thing.