AIBU to ask which is the most neutral term dinner, supper or tea?

[ConfusedWife1234]

AIBU to ask which the most neutral term for dinner/supper/tea is? I am not a native speaker and I have been told that your usage of the word says a lot about ethnic ancestry, social class, if your are from the UK, US or another English speaking country, part of the country and so on. Which is the most neutral term and when do I use which one?

If you are in a restaurant you would be offered the dessert menu.

Sweet is just that - a sweet tasting dish
Pudding can be sweet or savoury
'afters' is a colloquial term

So the all encompassing dessert is the correct term

Dinner is more neutral.

No hotel, for example , uses tea to mean an evening meal. Or dinner to mean lunch.

So dinner is more commonly used everywhere if you are eating an evening meal out of the home. Therefor it is the more neutral term.

@ConfusedWife1234 As CountessCon said, pudding / dessert / sweet are traditionally class specific.

Although TBH I can't think of people under 60 who say sweet - I think it might be decreasing in usage in favour of dessert.

To some people who say dessert'' or ''sweet to name the course, 'pudding' will only mean certain sponge type puddings: toffee pudding, summer pudding, spotted dick etc. But some people use the word to mean any sweet-tasting course at the end of a meal.

High tea anyone?? :-)

Pudding is what people eat as the sweet part of supper or dinner. It can either follow or precede cheese.

It is rarely called ‘sweet’; dessert is naff/common and not really what one would use.
Afters is, I believe, colloquial working class northern. It isn’t used often.

Posh people will call their evening meal “supper”. Everyone else thinks this is pretentious and silly.

:S People actually find it pretentious to say "supper"? Surely if that's what you grew up with it's just normal and natural?

But could an ice for example be dessert? I always thought dessert could only be something hard like a piece of cake or a piece of cheese or fruits.

Yes I would regard ice cream as dessert

I am northern, where:
dinner - lunchtime meal
tea - 5pm-7pm meal
supper - essentially breakfast in the night time. So cereal or toast after 7pm.

However in general chat I use dinner as evening meal. Tea as a hot drink. Supper as per my defenition above.

I'm afraid all of them have at least two meanings and they all come with assumptions.

Dinner often means midday meal, but is also used for main evening meal. To me it implies formal evening meal.

Tea either means just the drink, or an informal afternoon meal involving cakes and scones, or the main evening meal. I tend not to use it at all unless I am on holiday and am having a 'cream tea' which involves scones, jam and clotted cream.

Supper means either the main evening meal or a light snack before bedtime. I use it as my evening meal (unless it is formal enough to count as dinner). So when I cook at home it is supper but if I eat out it is dinner).

I think probably lunch for midday meal and dinner for evening meal are probably your best options. If Mumsnet users are typical, the most disliked term seem to be supper in the way I use it, so I suggest you avoid it.

At least we all agree on breakfast!

Dessert is whatever you have after you have finished the plate of food. This could be cake and custard, ice cream, yoghurt, fruit. Its essentially the final course of your meal.

I dont know anyone that would usually have a dessert after lunch apart from school kids or a sunday roast. Most desserts round my way are after the evening meal.

The only sensible answer here can be dinner. Only a small proportion of even British people call the evening meal tea, and when you consider all the other people who speak English as a first language, its then a tiny tiny number, barely worth counting.
And even those that call it tea still say dinner party and going out for dinner, so they aren't even consistent in using the term anyway.

Dinner.

Posh people will call their evening meal “supper”. Everyone else thinks this is pretentious and silly

No, not everyone else thinks that at all. Only people who are defensive or rude.

Is there another word for breakfast or is there just one word?

I used to use supper most often by the way. Guess some people think I am being pretentious now.

Northern here.
I'd say breakfast, lunch, tea. But then also call the lunch staff at primary school dinnerladies or dinnernannies.

Supper to be is a posh word for an evening meal or a late night snack, but still posh.

Breakfast means breakfast.
There aren't any other words for that, at least!

Breakfast means breakfast.There aren't any other words for that, at least!

Well if you have a late breakfast at the weekend it could be brunch....

Dinner is definitely more neutral. I live in the south and people I don’t know really say tea or supper.

Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner - pudding/dessert after dinner

Everything else is just a snack to me!

In my life the use of the term dessert would result in knowing looks regardless of what followed the main course. Pudding is anything sweet after a savoury course, not necessarily a stodgy pudding (although they are generally well received).

That should say *people I know. Not don’t know 🙄

Are people really saying brunch regularly at home? Am really only used to it as something cafes do.

I would say dinner is the most neutral term.
In my northern household the evening meal was called tea, except when we went out then it changed to dinner.
We said lunch and tea and my GPs said dinner and tea. We all understood each other .

A larger thanaverage, often cooked, breakfast served mid morning is brunch.

Should say mid-late morning.

Pudding is used as a generic term that is synonymous with dessert, sweet or afters.

It is also used for a specific type of food) which can be sweet or savoury, which is boiled for hours in a pudding bowl eg Christmas pudding, steak and kidney pudding, or sticky toffee pudding.