To think that you’re evening meal is called ‘tea’ not ‘dinner’?!

[Biscoffaddict]

I see so many posters on here referring to their evening mea, as ‘dinner’, but in real life I’ve never met anyone who does this and it’s always ‘tea’. It always has been tea. My parents call it tea, my grandparents called it tea, my friends call it tea, my work colleagues call it tea etc. ‘Dinner’ is the meal you have in the middle of the day and that’s why school dinner ladies, are called dinner ladies!

I don’t know but I find it quite irrationally annoying! Surely I’m not alone?!

@Chickenkatsu

I think that people from Essex sometimes say Tea as well, it's just a North/South thing

It’s a class thing not a regional thing. It’s just that some places, like Merseyside, Essex and chunks of Wales have an overwhelmingly and proud WC regional identity, regardless of income (and with a few MC people hiding out amongst them).

I'm from Essex and was born on a council estate - it has always been breakfast lunch and dinner for me.

Definitely dinner here. We have breakfast, lunch and dinner. Tea is a drink. We never have tea as food....!

Lunch at lunch time and dinner at tea time for me. * your.

@OxfordCat

Oh ffs. Have you never left Wales OP? Is your only other point of reference Coronation Street? . If you go to a restaurant do you ask to book a table for "tea"?!

I'd just ask to book a table for the time I wanted. I certainly wouldn't say "dinner" as how the f*ck would they know what time I meant?

I don’t know but I find it quite irrationally annoying!

It's a class thing. 'Tea' is working class.

I call it 'supper' if it's at home, and dinner if we're going out, or I'm having people over for a formal meal at home. At the end of the meal, we have pudding. We eat in the dining room downstairs, and then we retire to the upstairs sitting room (or the drawing room), where we sit on sofas.

All my language use here is a class marker (upper-middle old money since you ask).

FFS don't travel abroad Op (I don't mean England, actual real abroad) because in abroad they speak foreign and have actual different words for dinner and tea, your head will explode with annoyance.

Love threads like this. I vary between - going out for dinner/ what’s for tea/ what do you want for your dinner. So I’m a mixed bag depending on what’s going on. And who else is involved. They are all right. Apart from evening meal being called supper. Not there yet.

I usually call it supper. However, I would probably refer to it as dinner if we had people coming round and I was cooking a full on two or three course meal.

The meal in the middle of the day is always lunch. However, as a small child I called it dinner and we children took "dinner money" to school every Monday and had "dinner ladies" to supervise us. Nowadays they're called "lunchtime supervisors", which doesn't have the same ring to it, somehow.

We live in the South East we have, breakfast, lunch & dinner.

Tea is a drink, afternoon tea is cakes and sandwiches , high tea is what children have ie a cooked meal at around 5pm.

The evening meal is dinner or sometimes supper.

Your dinner is your main meal, which is usually in the evening.

Mind you we have a roast on Sundays, at lunchtime, and it's still lunch.

I also like going out for lunch, but obviously haven’t been doing these things for quite some time.

@FrankButchersDickieBow

I cannot bear the word 'supper'

If I hear anyone say it, a little bit of me dies inside.

My parents, all my uncles and aunts, my grandmother (only living grandparent); all their friends, all my friends' parents. All of them called it supper.

I would have liked to have you as a friend just from your name! Unfortunately you would have heard that word so many times that all those little bits would have added up .........

Dinner was posh meal with other people invited, where the cook(s) (mum, gran, me) would have made special effort - beef wellington, game, tarte tatin, etc. with starters. Supper doesn't have starters. Or pudding.

No one eats Christmas lunch 😁

What time does supper begin at? To me it would be 9pm, and thinking of bedtime.

I was taught that the evening meal is supper unless eaten out, or very formal with guests. I say dinner though as DH takes the piss out of supper.

The only time we would use the term supper would be if we had got back late from travelling somewhere and hadn't been able to eat dinner so we would get a quick light meal organised , often an omelet or similar and call it a late supper.

Lunch and dinner Monday/Saturday
Sunday lunch then tea on Sundays 🤷‍♀️

I am from the south but my grandparents (also born south) always said dinner and tea, but at school it was lunchtime. So I kind of use them both interchangeably.

There's something about the word supper that gives me the heebie jeebies. Not sure why but I get a proper shiver down my spine looking at it, it just doesn't seem... right? Not in a "my word is better than your word" kind of way but something very off-putting to it.

I need to hide this thread, I think.

Breakfast, lunch, dinner.
It's a class and also north/south thing.

Breakfast, lunch, tea (at 4pm, a cup of tea and a biscuit) and supper here. Middle class background, my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents used the same words.

Our evening meal - It’s tea Monday to Fri, dinner on Sat and Sunday and dinner if we go out to eat 😊.

@Popetthetreehugger

Lunch and dinner Monday/Saturday Sunday lunch then tea on Sundays 🤷‍♀️

This.