To hate the term 'Tea'

[ditzyglamour]

I guess I know I am as it seems the majority use it. But to me, its dinner and growing up I can never recall hearing anyone refer to it as 'Tea'.

I just find it so flowery and annoying.

Got that off my chest now 😃.

Anyone else?

I'm Northern (Cumbria) and I have breakfast. dinner then tea... nothing flowery about it...

Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner
Supper (evening snack)
You drink tea.

For the love of God don't watch Coronation Street or you might have a coronary!

Northern girl here. Tea is what you have as the last meal of the day. Tomato and brown sauce bottles and a teapot on the table are compulsory.

When I was a kid, it was breakfast, dinner, tea and supper.
I don't live in the UK anymore, and so it is now breakfast, lunch and dinner. Where I am now, we have tea time but most people are still working and rarely have it.

Midlander here. I say breakfast, lunch (I suppose I might say dinner if it was a roast or something, eaten in the middle of the day) and will normally have dinner after about 7 pm. But I have been known to say tea, it's interchangeable really, I can't get too fussed about it. I do think supper for the main evening meal sounds a little bit pretentious, but each to their own.

But people that always say dinner for a midday meal - do you mean you still call it dinner if it's just sandwiches or something? A 'dinner' of sandwiches seems a bit odd.

"Tea" is a common weird here (Australia). As in, it's something you'd associate with people from lower socioeconomic groups. Bogan/chav.

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are the standards here.

DH and I met at a northern English university and lived/worked there a few years after so we picked up a few northernisms including tea. My gps were southern wc and would also have said breakfast dinner and tea so it's not just a northern thing, just more widespread (cross-class) there as far as I could tell.

Now we live in the south and more & more people call it supper. We are near where I grew up but no-one said supper then. Either the residents have changed or more aspirational lower-middle/middle class people have adopted it too. Or class is meaningless.

I couldn't help but smile at:

Supper makes me cringe it is a horrible word said in a twee way by nigel slater.

Just can't bring myself to use it even if it's the done thing. I'll stick with confusing people with my mixed class signifiers.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner for me. DP is from NI and switches between tea and dinner.

I don't mind the word tea but when it has a description in front it makes me feel a bit queasy. 'Picky tea' or 'chippy tea'.

As for supper, I had no idea people had added another meal to the day! Maybe if you had a big dinner at dinner time rather than a light tea at tea time you wouldn't need another meal before bed!

I'm from a farming background in north-east Scotland - we had "tea" at that time. Similar. Although DH (Scottish) and I have lived in the SE of England for over 30 years and we've been beaten into submission. I tend not to call it anything these days.

Tea where I came from is still used in the traditional ‘tea and biscuits’ context. So it tends to be a snack between lunch and dinnee.

Just talking to DH this minute about this extremely important subject.
Apparently his family (Irish father and Highland mother) called their evening meal 'dinner'. I'm gobsmacked. We were definitely a 'tea' family.

I eat supper.

Supper

Supper

Supper

Scot here, we have breakfast, lunch and dinner. We don't have supper which would be a slice of toast and a cup of tea before bed.

Breakfast
Dinner
Tea (about 5 or 6)
Supper (just before bed)

Breakfast.
Dinner at dinner time or lunch if it's a sandwich.
Tea at tea time.

Similar to Scrowy the farming day was punctuated as follows:
Breakfast- 7.00 am Porridge and bacon and eggs
Coffee time- 10.30 am Coffee and biscuits
Dinner 12.30 Cooked 2/3 course meal Soup Stew and pudding
Pieces (Harvest or silage time) - Between 3-4 pm Sandwiches cakes and flasks of TEA
Tea- 6.00 pm Cooked main meal plus bread and cakes and TEA
Supper- a snack pre bed
My poor old mother.

A dinner is a 3 course meal.

People who did manual work needed a large meal in the middle of their working day so had 'dinner' at lunchtime.

In ex industrial areas the terminology has stuck.

That's all.

I use dinner and lunch for midday and the. Dinner or tea for evening meal. Seem to swap them about without even noticing it

Breakfast lunch and supper here. But I am a ‘posh wanker’ I guess. I call it what my parents and grandparents call it. Sometimes use dinner but that would formal - going out or formal dinner party. As I don’t really want friends coming round to eat to think it’s formal I usually call it a supper party.

Dinner at lunch time grates for me. Tea is a drink. Tea time is 4pm with biscuits, cakes or sandwiches.

North East here, nothing flowery about a big burly mackem bloke saying I'm Gannin yem for me tea.
Breakfast
Dinner
Tea.
Makes me cringe to say lunch and dinner 😂

Farming family here !
Breakfast
Dinner
Tea
Supper

Dh often has sandwiches in the fields for tea when he is on with silage or combine is in doing the corn

Round here supper is something kids have before bed to put them on until morning. As for the rest

Breakfast
Dinner
Tea