Is "having my tea" a northern thing?

[Queenoftheblitz]

I'm a working class southerner. The only tea I have is in a cup with milk and sugar.
On mn a lot of posts talk about their evening meal as"tea", "what shall i make for tea" etc.
Do any southeners call it tea?

I love the idea that you can hate how someone refers to their own meals

Have a think about the ladies who served you your midday meal at school... what were they called? Oh yes, dinner ladies

Breakfast, dinner and tea, supper sometimes.

Now I have moved down South dinner is sometimes lunch, but tea time remains tea time!

See, supper for me, as a child, was a small snack meal eaten well after tea, if one was feeling a bit peckish before bedtime. My Grandma (in Goole) was told off for introducing the concept of 'supper' when I was 5 and stayed with her for a week. I then came home and started expected Jacob's crackers and cheese before I cleaned my teeth each night from then on. This was not good, apparently . I recall my mum hissing 'This is your Mother, this is! Tell her! Tell we don't do supper!' at my dad in the kitchen...

In the terribly middle class part of ScotlandI grew up in it’s breakfast, lunch and tea.

My kids call them Lunch Ladies, which I find very odd.

I'm a Southerner and used to call it 'breakfast, lunch and dinner' since I have had DC's and they eat much earlier than us in the evening, we use either 'tea or dinner' for them. When myself & DH have our evening meal it is 'dinner'.

I have never understood 'supper' though.

Posh northerners? grin man, really showing a bit of a snobbish side there OP.

No intent to. When i say posh northerners I mean old money aristocracy type posh.

I'm also from Bury @Crispbutty (although now in Bolton)and yeah it always breakfast, dinner and tea supper is toast or cereal before bed.

I never use the word "supper" but my DGM used to, it was a light snack before bed.

I’m in North Cumbria and use both.

Lunch or dinner
Dinner or tea
Supper (bedtime snack sort of time)

No reasoning at all. Just the way it is 🤷🏻‍♀️

Northern here and it's...Breakfast, dinner, tea and supper is something you have before bed if you're hungry 😁

I have breakfast dinner and tea.
My husband has breakfast lunch and dinner.
The kids seem to be more on his side but I’M the one that cooks and meal plans so I’m not changing what I say now. He wants to be a twat over ‘oh, you meant did I want soup for LUNCH? I thought you meant for dinner, that’s why I said no! I will have some now!’ Just means he gets no dinner. Or he gets his own.

Breakfast, lunch, interchangeably dinner or tea (we all eat together every day at 5.20pm).

What do people who call their midday meal dinner call the box they take their packed lunch in? Here it is firmly packed lunch in a lunch box, so I don't know what else you'd call that.

breakfast , dinner , tea in Manchester . how about a hot drink , are you a brew or cuppa person . Its always a brew for me

I use 'tea' and 'dinner' interchangeably (southerner with northern influences living in East), but only ever 'lunch' for midday. It has been a constant point of contention my 15 yr relationship.

I've always lived in SE England and say breakfast, lunch and dinner. I have an aversion to the word 'supper'. I just can't stand the sound of it.

From NI - tea is the evening meal - supper is a bowl of cornflakes before bed!

We have lunch and tea. I am in derbyshire. Its still tea if its at 9pm!

And I definitely think of 'supper' as posh as I only knew one posh person who said it growing up!

I'm south east and say breakfast, lunch and dinner.

I have noticed I call dinner 'Tea' to the DC frequently. They call it that at nursery so maybe that's where it came from

We have 'tea' here in Cornwall.

I wonder how the word for a drink -'tea' - became a word for a meal.

It was lunch and dinner growing up - in the south, mum from WC Midlands background, dad more MC northern. DH is from the north, claims WC but more lower MC IMO and I honestly have no idea what he used to call meals ... However once we had DD we ended up with lunch and tea, because it never felt right to me to have ‘dinner’ at 5pm (or earlier). She’s a teenager now, we eat later, and I vary between dinner and tea (definitely dinner if we go out for it).

The only time I have dinner in the middle of the day is Christmas Day :)

I’m from Nottingham and we always said Tea.
Breakfast, dinner, tea
Although now I say lunch, I still say tea.
My DD always says Dinner for the evening meal though. I prefer the word tea because there’s less expectation...If she says ‘what’s for dinner’ and I say beans on toast, it’s like she’s looking down on me

I am in Essex. I have breakfast, lunch and tea. Dinner is a posh meal that you go out for and I have never had supper in my life.

I think it's possibly more of a Northern thing? When I first worked up there, it caused me a couple of slightly 'erm...' moments when new colleagues asked me to join them for dinner .