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?

So she’s being snobby in your view and your response is inverted snobbery,,neither are better op. Neither,

Breakfast, lunch, tea/dinner. Sometimes lunch is dinner. Sometimes tea is just tea. I can see why people start saying supper.

But if you find it inappropriate then cut her off.
She clearly has ideas above her station.

Breakfast, dinner, tea.
Perfectly simple.
I think the water in the south affects some people's brains.

Do they have lunch ladies at school?
Sounds all wrong to me.

What is tea and supper? Genuine question.

I agree with you its annoying she has suddenly started calling it supper.

😂 but dinner could be either. There is no ambiguity with lunch! Which is why lunch is right

Tea is the meal you have about 5 pm at teatime and supper is a snack between tea and bedtime if you feel the need.

My dad (Londoner) calls the evening meal supper.

I haven’t read the full thread but I heard someone call it a “kitchen supper” because they weren’t in the dining room but at the kitchen table and had guests

No, I eat tea. At 8pm. Deal with it.

LTB?

This topic always annoys me. People can be so sanctimonious about which is 'correct'. Just ask, if you aren't sure whether they mean midday or evening, and if you do know what they mean and are just horrified that they haven't used your preferred word for the given meal (how many just recoiled at that apparently distasteful word?), it's time to get over yourself.

(I prefer lunch and supper. Dinner can mean lunch or supper, so I find it an inferior word, and never use 'tea' unless referring to the drink.)

Not RTFT so don't know if anyone's asked you if this is the sister with the pony and the swimming pool?

I eat it at 6!

You deal with it!

I’ve never heard anyone use the word supper in real life. I’m not really sure what it would be!

I thought supper is the sneaky bowl of cereal before bed.

I had (still have, vaguely) a friend connected to a well-known and very upper class family and who was herself definitely upper middle class. She invited friends for 'supper'. I call it 'dinner' and mean the evening meal. My late DH's mother (and also mine) called 'lunch' 'dinner', meaning the midday meal.
'Dinner' used to happen at around 11 a.m. until some time in the eighteenth century (which confuses people looking at historical records occasionally!) when those rich enough to afford extensive lighting at night had their main meal in the evening. Really, it's horses for courses.

Is this inspired by Hyacinth? Is that you Daisy - or Onslow.

I haven't suggested that you can't.

It's you who are trying to be the Tea Police.

Well no, snobby is always better!

yep. Dinner was the middle of the day, so of course you be asked something like "shall we go get dinner?" at midday.... that's the whole point of this thread. We have different words for the same meal in different parts of the county .....

Perfectly true. Inverted snobbery usually is served with bullying and sneering too, it’s quite incredible how people talk about “ micro aggressions” yet never mention inverted snobbery, which is pretty much a macro aggression.

And served on Royal Doulton with the hand painted periwinkles?

Yes, at my school we had lunchtime supervisors, but I expect colloquially they were still called dinner ladies.
Breakfast, lunch and dinner here unless dinner is not a cooked meal in which case it’s tea. Supper is the same piece of toast before bed that many of us have. It’s like the mumsnet chicken, feeds the 5,000!