To not understand

[TeamSpirit]

Why do english people call dinner for tea? What do you call tea then?
Not trying to be funny - just want the story behind..

So where do you stand on soup for lunch pox?

You could have added all sorts of confusion to the 'is soup dinner' thread a few days ago.

By your reckoning, I have 2 dinners every day because just about all the food I eat is hot.

I grew up in Oxfordshire, moved to Cardiff for 10 years, West Sussex for 7 and now in the W Midlands. Breakfast, lunch, tea - if at home and would refer to going out for dinner. I'd never talk about supper but have it mentally as a late night snack thing

Born and brought up in Glasgow, dinner has two meanings - yes, you have your dinner at dinnertime (12/1pm) and your tea at teatime (5/6pm), but if it's late, you 'go out for dinner' (8pm-ish).

It's a bit of a shibboleth.

But if you have a hot meal at lunchtime surely you don't have another one in the evening

Why ever not? I much prefer hot food so nearly everything I eat is hot.

If I have cheese on toast in the middle of the day, instead of a cheese sandwich, it seems odd that doing that would either change the name of the meal, or influence what I ate in the evening.

My kids are always confused 🙈

Weekdays and Saturdays-
Breakfast, lunch and dinner (supper if still hungry it's like breakfast before bed usually toast or something)

Sunday-
Dinner is in the afternoon about 3/4pm

There is also afternoon tea
And the drink tea
And "kids tea" which is when the kids get put to bed after one meal, but the adults stay up for a proper "dinner"

I don't use tea to mean an evening meal but sometimes call lunch dinner
So I'll say "breakfast, dinner, dinner, supper" or "breakfast, dinner, kids tea, kids supper, adults dinner" which is when it gets confusing...

in our house meals are breakfast, lunch because its at lunchtime and dinner, tea is a hot drink that i probably drink 20 times a day im from birmingham

OP. Everything clear now ? As mud probably.

North east here and it’s breakfast, lunch and tea. Never heard it any other way. Dinner to us (people I associate with in our area anyway) is a Sunday dinner.

For me:

Breakfast
Lunch
Tea (cup of tea, sandwiches and/or cake)
Supper (7pmish) - only called dinner if going out for three course meal

So, wrong'uns, what do your children eat at school, school lunches?

For me “tea” is a light meal, either sandwiches , something on toast, salad,

Dinner is a larger, hot meal (regardless of the time of day)

Previous generations had a cooked breakfast, cooked mid-day meal and then a lighter meal in the evening.
People had more physical occupations so needed the fuel during the day, then a lighter meal in the early evening.

But why is hot food 'big and heavy' and cold food 'light'?

Sandwiches aren't 'light'. Carby stodge compared with fish or chicken and

@BarbaraofSevillle I don't mean a cheese toasty, I mean like... if you have a roast at midday what do you have in the afternoon?

I am often being corrected by my children because I use the words interchangeably, having been raised in the north east, but born and living (now) in Cambridgeshire.
When I say dinner, they never really know what I mean, because I could mean lunch, or I could mean tea.
Bad confusing mummy...

peach

Anything. I had a roast dinner yesterday as it happens because we went to the carvery. I had fishcakes and salad for tea, but it could be anything.

But you call it tea - I'm confused by what people call an evening meal if they've had hot food at lunch time and have something cold in the evening.

But you call it tea - I'm confused by what people call an evening meal if they've had hot food at lunch time and have something cold in the evening

If we had a large, hot lunch - which is really unusual for us - we’d then not have dinner and have a light supper.

Tea is either a lovely hot drink, OR a fancy High Tea type thing you have with fingers sandwiches and pretty cakes, possibly scones.

Home Counties.

If I had soup for lunch and salad for dinner, it would still be dinner. It's the time of day that dictates what I call it, not the actual foodstuff.

Surely if you had leftover Chinese takeaway for breakfast you wouldn't say "I just had my dinner?"

So, wrong'uns, what do your children eat at school, school lunches?

Yes

Breakfast, lunch and dinner here too - unless it's Sunday dinner which could be at lunchtime but is still dinner :)

So, wrong'uns, what do your children eat at school, school lunches?

Yes

Breakfast, dinner and tea. School dinners. Dinner ladies. Now and again called lunch but at a push.

So I'm from the west midlands. Dinner is the midday meal, as in school dinners. Tea is the more casual evening meal you'd have at home. But if you were posh and going out, you were going out for dinner!! Go figure.

well I'm confusing myself now I was brought up in the north east in the days when you went home from school for dinner, at lunchtime, which was called dinnertime. It was a proper hot meal, home for tea after school, something like egg and toast, sandwich and cake, as we grew older the hot meal was introduced at tea time, sandwich etc at dinnertime.
Met and married a southerner who introduced lunch as a concept, we have lunch now, at lunchtime but although we have friends over for dinner, go out for dinner we still say 'what's for tea' meaning dinner so yup confused.

Your tea's in the oven luv

always remember my neighbour saying this lol