Supper or dinner?

[HappyHen17]

My husband works for a very elite family and they refer to their evening meal as supper. We’ve always bickered at home between breakfast, lunch and dinner or breakfast, dinner and teas; so where does supper come in?! The only friends I know who use supper are people who have distanced themselves entirely from their roots and embraced their new found upper middle class status, they previously used one of the above three to distinguish meals. So AIBU to ask what decides if it’s tea, dinner or supper-is it class AIBU or location YANBU?

Supper's a wee snack before bed.

I think in Surrey and at least some other parts of the Home Counties you don’t have to be all that posh to say supper.

But then when do dinner or tea come in? Is it always supper? What is the difference?!

I don't know why but I absolutely hate the word supper 😦

I think of dinner and supper as different meals. Dinner is a large main meal of the day eaten somewhere between 6pm-9pm. Supper is something lighter, like soup and toast or an omelette, eaten after about 9pm.

MN always argues that it’s an upper class thing to call any evening meal your supper, but the three very much upper class friends I have, distinguish as above.

We say supper when we mean our everyday evening meal, but a fancy dinner party is dinner. I'm not quite sure why!

Adults

Breakfast, lunch, dinner, supper is a smaller meal later at night

DC

Breakfast, lunch, dinner at home (tea when their friends are over and vice versa)

The same as @AlwaysLatte here. Supper is eaten at about 7pm. Tea is a slice of bread, biscuit and cup of tea at about 4pm.

I say supper for evening meal rather than dinner or tea.

’Tea’ is tea and a biscuit or something similar.
’Dinner’ tends to be a more formal occasion.

My MIL (thinks she’s posher than she actually is) has breakfast, dinner (what I’d call lunch), tea in the late afternoon (scones/cakes etc) and then a small supper later on.

I consider myself working class and would have breakfast, lunch and dinner.

It really irritates her that my kids have dinner and not supper 😂

Supper is the regular evening meal, dinner is for more formal meals, such as dinner parties. If we have guests I will invite them for supper or dinner and that sets expectations for the meal.

Supper is the bowl of cornflakes with warm milk I occasionally have at about 8pm

IMO twats say supper to mean dinner in the evening.

Other folk will say supper to mean a late evening snack before bed

In my opinion it’s breakfast dinner tea and supper but I knew someone who had tea then dinner on a weekend. Supper is like cereal before bed. Who knew labelling your meal could be so complicated

Dinner is a meal between 5 and 7 ish

Supper is food before bed

Just what I think anyway

I say dinner my partner says tea

We say dinner or tea. I always think of supper as late night snacks. Tea is early evening. Dinner is 7 o'clockish and is a more substantial meal to me

Supper is an evening meal and usually eaten around 19:00 at home with no guests.
Dinner is rather more formal, eaten later, around 20:00, with invited guests.
Tea is a drink.
Afternoon tea is a more substantial "snack" around 16:00.
High tea is breakfast with cake and other sweet stuff eaten at the dining table at around 18:00.

Everyone giving their definition needs to state their social class and location or we aren’t getting anywhere.

Oh my gosh!! My head hurts!! I’m from a lower middle class background and always said breakfast lunch dinner, husband from a working class background and says breakfast dinner and tea. The people he works for are billionaires who associate with royalty but say supper, so are they pretentious or is that just the posh way?! So confusing! And so British 😂

Glasgow - working class

This is a great explanation! Fits with the timings and circumstances too. Thanks!

Supper is posh and old fashioned IMO....my dad used it and was both those things,and may also have come from him being very religious, as it is a term used in the bible (ie; The last supper)

Dinner is what I think many middle class people would use for the evening meal.Tea I would generally see as more working class but I've always called it that 🤷‍♀️ (maybe as abit of a protest to my parents calling it 'supper'!)

Supper, because my gran thought she was posh. She wasn't. We were from the south.

Husband is of northern descent and had tea.