My sister has started calling her evening meal supper ...

[TheFateofOphelia]

She was talking about having friends round for "supper" on Friday. I was puzzled as she knows, and I know, that supper is a piece of toast if you're feeling peckish at bedtime.

Apparently, now she's moved to Surrey she no longer has her dinner between 12 and 1, she has lunch. Now I'm ok with that but AIBU to draw the line at her having supper at tea time?

Dunno tbh, I've always called it supper. Dinner if out.

Outrageous. I wouldn't allow it. Tell her she either calls her meals what you want her to call them, or you cut her off forever.

So why does it matter? Is this one of those things where people will cry jealousy lile a child would say?

Are the suppers candlelit?

It’s interesting the regional differences. It’s always been lunch here (not posh) which confused me as to why we had dinner ladies at school. Dinner is your regular meal at 5-7pm. Tea is a drink. Supper is later and often toast or crumpets but if I skip dinner then I’d have something substantial for supper.

Is it white tie or black?

Hear hear. Cut her off!

She is just trying to fit in with a new social circle maybe. It’s not a crime.

Oh i love supper. Crumpets with loads of butter and lashings of jam and a cup of milky tea.

I'd go to that.

But people call things different things. let her crack on and leave her be.

I don’t think it’s a Surrey thing. I’m on the border and never hear it called supper. My dad’s family from Sheffield used to sometimes I think. I’d just be confused the first few times she said it and then get the hang of it. Presumably she’s picked it up from someone she knows. She may not be aware she’s doing it.

I agree op. We have breakfast, dinner, tea and supper. We know what lunch is we just don't say it. I think it's a regional or a class thing.

You can bet your arse it’s served on the royal dolton an all 💅

Is she having a supper party? Or a dinner party with supper? I also have an irrational dislike of the term.

I like the word supper. I might start using it more!

I also like the word frock.

It seems a bit old fashioned somehow.

Supper is making toast using toasting forks by the fire in the nursery with nanny. All very jolly.

It’s the law in Surrey - you have to sign to agree as you cross the border, extra points if you’re wearing a gilet. It’s why I ended up in Hampshire right on the border and was never accepted in Surrey 😂
When I was early twenties I worked with a very middle-class woman who always talked about “supper” and I always felt sorry that she had to go home to just a bit of toast and no proper evening meal.

I was told that in Scotland "supper" meant any meal from a chip shop that had chips with it.
Maybe she is eating a lot of chips!

One of my son’s friends, aged 8, used to tell me I was incorrect to tell my son it was dinner time at 1230pm. He said ‘you mean lunch. Dinner is much later in the day’. But to me, schools have dinner time in the middle of the tea. People just have different terms for things and are influenced by others around them.

And you must block on social media

Remember than inverse snobbery is as much of a thing as snobbery OP.

Shes just reflecting the world she lives in now - which isn’t the same one you are living in.

🤷‍♀️ Calling lunch dinner would be quite conspicuous, she’s just trying to fit in with others. We have (lovely) friends who’ll invite us for a ‘kitchen supper’ which makes us feel rather second rate.

Supper? So that's milk and biscuits before bed than?

The word “s*pper” gives me the inexplicable but visceral ick. Unfortunately I’m Surrey born and bred as well.

Darkest bucks here
breakfast , lunch , tea and then supper
we may go out for Dinner occasionally

I know precisely two people who have “supper” at teatime. Both super posh.
They claim to be confused when I suggest it’s tea time and they see that either as the stuff in the teapot or a full on afternoon tea!

the situation is insufferable!
we have
lunch
tea - or perhaps dinner if people are coming round or we are going out

supper is late night munchies, which don’t happen in our house

@NoCommentingFromNowOn I love the word frock and say it all the time when appropriate obviously, I don't go round saying it randomly.