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?

Dinner is in the evening, not at lunchtime.

We have breakfast/lunch/dinner here - tea would be a light meal if you had had a big lunch. (Eg go out for a Sunday roast then have beans and toast about 8pm.)

I’m in Scotland and agree with pp that a supper is something from the chipper.

@GarlicPressups, I always thought ‘high tea’ was a more substantial one than an ‘afternoon tea’ of sandwiches//bread and butter/cake, with some sort of hot dish of meat or fish, and salad included. So that afterwards, only a light ‘supper’ would be needed, if anything.

When I moved to the midlands, and then further north about 30 years ago, I found the regional differences occasionally confusing. A colleague asked me several times if I wanted to have dinner - I was totally blindsided by that, until I realised he meant lunch.

My kids are little northerners, but they have some of our southern ways as well, so we all say lunch and dinner (we eat late, around 8pm). Supper is in the later evening, mostly on a Sunday, and usually some variation of cheese, bread and eggs.

We never say 'tea' for a meal. Friends use it for an early meal for little DC, as in 'children's tea,' but that's one we haven't adopted.

Go all Downton on her ass and talk about taking a tray to your room. That’ll mess with her mind.

Hahaha, draw the line OP. Draw the line.

Only if they use the Royal Doulton with the hand painted periwinkles 😊

I think we have more important things to worry about.

Supper is not a thing for me whatever the time is. I can't articulate why, the word just gives me the ick.

‘Supper’ for dinner stands out as being pretentious, I don’t hear it much and I’m in Surrey. Sup sups darling.
Lunch/dinner and dinner/tea in our household.
Tea/lunch = cold. Dinner = hot.
Unless Sunday lunch, obvs <gavel>

Surely all nurseries call it tea - my sons' ones did (London)

I always thought supper was very Enid Blyton and Mallory Towers/Famous Five which came across as quite upper crust.

You mean a ‘Chippy Tea’?!?!? 😂

I change between lunch and dinner for mid day meal, usually because I work in a school and we have school dinners and the dinner hall. However, I would say lunch at home. I say tea for the evening meal but DH is more likely to say dinner so I sometimes say that. I never say supper. I am Northern!

I live in South Africa and your evening meal is called supper.

We may go out for ‘dinner’ but supper is always supper.

We also don’t have tea. Tea is a warm drink in a cup.

It's when she starts referring to it as Kitchen Sups that you really need to start worrying.

Supper (and always precociously) pronounced ‘sapper’ gives me the rage!

Why denigrate Surrey OP What's it ever done to you?
I was brought up with breakfast, lunch and dinner and if you wanted it, supper was prior to bedtime. Still use those expressions as do my kidults in their 20's.
So I guess that makes us all raging snobs on MN 😆

Oh!! ‘Fish supper’ and ‘Special fish supper’ - the two types of meal from a Scottish fish and cup shop :)

Urgh a local social climber recently invited me to ‘kitchen sups’, interestingly I knew I was busy before she told me the date 😂

Breakfast
Dinner
Tea

no supper

Dinner interchangeable with lunch - dinner time, lunch time, lunch break

rural South West

Exactly the same in NI. Well the Belfast part of NI anyway. My brother has been living in the north of England for many years now and is calling his meals and mealtimes by the WRONG names🤣 He still has his Belfast accent, so it sounds even more wrong to my ears! I always have a bit of a dig at him, but it’s all in good humour.

My daughter came home from uni calling her afters 'pudding'!

I have started calling them midday and evening meals because some days I have my main meal at midday.

Breakfast lunch and dinner, tea is either morning, afternoon or early or late evening crumpets and such like.