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?

"the lady of the house would ask you a rhetorical question "You'll have had your tea"?"

I associate that phrase with Barry Cryer and Graeme Garden in I'm sorry I haven't a clue.

Dinner when referring to an evening meal is too posh for me.

I have breakfast, dinner & tea.

But do you call it dinner only when you go too - /book a restaurant because they actually wouldn't understand you going to restaurant and asking for "tea".....

No because us tea - partakers are able judge the context and use the word appropriate to the situation.

All interchangeable and anyone pretending to be confused by any of the above is guilty of either snobbery or inverted snobbery

But to be fair I haven't seen any of the tea- partakers/ dinner ladies bunch claiming they don't understand. Nor are they being inverse snobs.

It's a northern thing isn't it. Always tea to me. "Tea's ready'" there. No big deal, not fancy or anything. Supper is a bit posh for me

Well, back in the day in Edinburgh you couldn't get more posh than the ladies of Morningside. Think Hyacinth Bucket on steroids? There's a bit of urban gossip that if you turned up unannounced for a visit around teatime, the lady of the house would ask you a rhetorical question "You'll have had your tea"? Woe-be-tide you if you said no! The glare would scorch you at 100yds. My aunt was just like that. She didn't come from Morningside but she may as well have done.

Right, surely this is correct wherever in the country you live?

The meal eaten around lunchtime is lunch.
Tea is a pot of tea with possibly sandwiches and cake eaten mid afternoon.
The evening meal is dinner.

I found it very confusing when my children were invited by a friend's mother in the school holidays to 'dinner'. I wondered if she really wanted my child there for their evening meal, then I realised that she meant 'lunch' ie a midday meal!

I had never heard lunch called dinner before.

"But do you call it dinner only when you go too - /book a restaurant because they actually wouldn't understand you going to restaurant and asking for "tea"....."

If I booked a restaurant I'd just ask for a table for 7pm or whatever. I would call it going out for tea.

interchangeable to me, but to DP its tea at 4pm dinner at 6pm

I dont drink tea...

school dinners always used to refer to lunch, which i call lunch

And I'd call supper a really late meal like a round of toast before bed or perhaps go My for something to eat 'after' the theatre around 10.30pm.

supper is what DP calls a midnight snack that they are not supposed to me eating

This debate raged fierce and long between me (SE, dinner) and my Northern/Scottish friends (tea). I assumed it was a regional thing til I met DP who will often refer to evening meal as tea. He is from Essex. I give up.

To me, if you have something like a sandwich or cheese on toast in the evening it's 'tea', if you have something like shepherds pie or lasagne it's 'dinner'.

Tea and cake at 4pm is a 'quick snack'.

*Right, surely this is correct wherever in the country you live?

The meal eaten around lunchtime is lunch.
Tea is a pot of tea with possibly sandwiches and cake eaten mid afternoon.
The evening meal is dinner.*

Obviously not.

It's not a Northern thing either.

And the English entitlement on this thread, assuming the North and South belong to them only is crazy.

Round 2: pudding/pud/dessert/sweet/afters?

YANBU, I can't stand it either

AutumnalLeaves38

Pudding!

Pudding. Northern. Actually I know this isn't the class thread (it might as well be) but it has reminded me that my mum laughed at her mil for telling off her son (mum's dh; my stepdad) for saying pudding when 'he should be saying sweet of course' and for saying lavatory when 'he should have been saying toilet'. All ridiculous but it stays with you this thing of right and wrong way to label things. My mum was explicitly taught it at school for the times she might be having dinner with Important People.

Tea where I come from (nw) and supper sounds super pretentious.
Dinner is acceptable if we’re going out or having (adult) friends round.

Had a funny disagreement with posh friends over whatsapp recently. We were about to visit them and said that we’d have to leave after tea. They thought that was too early- I said I meant about 8/9 o’clock.

They genuinely thought we meant we’d be leaving after afternoon/high tea - so
4/5pm not after what they call “northern tea” which is supper in their heads!

And definitely pudding or pud.

Pudding or pud.

Breakfast and lunch. For the kids evening meal, tea and dinner are used interchangeably in our house. London born and bred. DH and I eat later, and I would say to him, 'what shall we have for dinner?' Would never use tea. My mum hates me calling the kids meal tea or dinner she calls it supper.

Definitely pudding! Nothing else!!

I'm from the West Midlands, and for us it was always:

Breakfast (first meal of the day)
Lunch (midday meal)
Dinner (evening meal, usually served between 5.30 - 6pm)

Supper was a light snack or meal late in the evening, usually if we'd had a heavy lunch and skipped dinner, or were being particularly greedy.

Tea is a drink, or a light late afternoon meal of sandwiches and sweet treats.

My husband is Northern, he calls lunch dinner and dinner tea.

Both agree on pudding!

If you have tea as your evening meal, then you would never call a packed lunch a packed lunch, as you don't eat lunch, you eat dinner. If you take food somewhere to be eaten at dinner time then either your take your dinner or there are other regional variations, including snap, snapin or packing up.

If you have tea as your evening meal, then you would never call a packed lunch a packed lunch, as you don't eat lunch, you eat dinner

Oh, I'd better tell everyone I know, then. We've always done it, so your "would never" is incorrect. We eat a packed lunch for our dinner.