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?!

Breakfast dinner tea for me.

If you go to a restaurant do you ask to book a table for "tea"?
I just tell them what time I want to book for as probably the vast majority of people do. "can I book a table for 2 at x time."

Breakfast, lunch and dinner here

Only posh people say supper, supper to us is a mug of tea and a couple of Jaffa cakes. The only exception to this is if we’re out somewhere and have a main meal say mid afternoon and then have cheese on toast for supper at 8pm.

Christmas dinner is at 4 or 5pm.

So teatime

If you go to a restaurant do you ask to book a table for "tea"?!

In our house someone would say ' shall we go out for tea tonight?'
Then I'd phone the restaurant and ask for a table for x people at x time..... no need to specify which meal it is.

In our house:
Breakfast is the first meal of the day (any time before 10)
After 10 it would be brunch and take the place of breakfast and lunch.
Lunch would be 12:30/1ish (unless we had brunch).
Afternoon tea would be about 3ish and only really happen if we had brunch or visitors in the afternoon (we’d rarely have anything more than a snack for lunch if we were having guests later. Dinner would be less likely but not totally written off, especially in summer).
Dinner would be 6/7ish and be the main meal of the day.
Supper would be about 1-2 hours before bed and consist of a comforting warm treat like jam on toast or a boiled egg and soldiers. We’d only really do supper if dinner was missed.

Note: If breakfast was very early we would do elevenses and push lunch closer to 1pm.

I've only ever met one person who calls dinner 'tea'.

I quite often call any of it ‘snap’ or ‘chow’

@Blabla81

Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Tea is what I drink.

This

@FiveGoMadInDorset

The word luncheon was used by a group of girls that went to a "finishing" school in Southern Sydney, called June Dally Watkins. The school was still going until around 2005.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_Dally-Watkins

The word luncheon wasn't the only thing old fashioned about them.

I didn't know if it was because I'm not posh enough to use the word luncheon, or if it a really old fashioned word in the U.K. (but June Dally Watkins hadn't noticed this).

Why is a Sunday lunch called a roast dinner?

But it’s not. You may call it that. I don’t. I have my dinner on Sunday at dinner time, same as my Christmas dinner. I’ve never cooked a roast for mid day and neither have my parents nor Hs. The only time I’ve eaten a roast at mid day is when we go for a pub lunch and they have it on the menu. It’s still my lunch and we still have dinner in the evening.

@Ninkanink

It’s regional. No point arguing over it really...

Many, many people don’t use the term ‘tea’ for their evening meal. And many, many people have their evening meal much later than ‘tea time’, too.

Luckily I’m Danish so I really don’t GAF about what’s ‘common’, ‘posh’, working class, upper class or whatever else.

It's not regional, though you could still reasonably say there's no point arguing about it .

It's a class thing, not a regional thing (unless other people - not you! - are suggesting that being southern = posh, and being northern = common).

Have you never met anyone from outside your own area?

It's regional, lunch is at midday, I do say tea though. Dinner is the type of meal

supper at 8.30pm...er no.

Its tea here in the northwest ,and my Dh and Ds1 don't take their lunch to work/ school they take their Butties 🤣

Yes I suppose I should have regional/class. I alluded to the latter when I mentioned class later on in my comment. From what I’ve gathered over the years on MN - the only place besides the DF where I’ve ever seen it discussed - it does seem to straddle classes (or maybe class borders/boundaries) in some regional areas (but then I’ve never paid enough attention to get it all down pat, tbh). Either way I don’t really care.

I’m just glad my dinner’s almost ready as I’m starving!

Why is a Sunday lunch called a roast dinner?
We've always called it Sunday Lunch. And Christmas lunch, etc.

urgh thought I had quoted...

@CertieCumboyle

(Also should have been *should have said )

@SachaStark

We use both.

So long as it’s not called “supper”, which is properly insufferable.

I detest the word "supper" too.

If you are posh then it’s supper, with Mummy and Father.

@Bagelsandbrie

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

Exactly the same here.

It’s a regional and a class thing.

I call it supper or dinner, as does everyone I know. I do have a few friends some of whose families might say it but they wouldn’t (which one of them says is to do with having moved into the middle class.)

To me tea is a drink.

Back in the day when I was very young, we moved from the UK to another country. Our new neighbours were very friendly and invited my mum to bring us all over for tea one late afternoon. So thinking tea is a meal we all got dressed up and off we went expecting to be fed. Only no real food appeared, only some biscuits and a tray, with tea on it. Cue us kids moaning and complaining that we were starving...

It's a very British phrase. Nowhere else in the world is tea a meal. It's dinner usually.