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?

Disown her immediately.

I don't necessarily think it's pretentious if it's what you've always said, it's more when someone shifts their vocabulary in an attempt to impress others that it's pretentious.

YA BOTH BU!!!

lt’s Breakfast, Dinner and Tea 😃

And whether it's considered "pretentious" or not really depends on local geography and culture.

Personally I would tend to associate "supper" (when used to mean main evening meal) with rural America and regard it as homely and rustic, not pretentious.

But that reflects my own background where "supper" just meant a light, late meal for night owls feeling peckish, or for people who missed dinner for some reason.

Northerner here. If my sister started this sh**, I'd tell my dad and she'd be out of the will before you could say "chipped antique tea set." There's no place for this appalling behaviour!

As someone brought up in Asia, I find this very confusing.
We have breakfast, lunch at mid day, tea (which is a light snack in the late afternoon), dinner which is a substantial meal from 7-9pm and supper which is an optional (really) late night meal (after clubbing, a midnight movie etc). None of these meal names denote social class.

It has been seen in the past as a working class thing to call the midday meal dinner and more middle to upper class to call it lunch.
That may not be how it is now but I am getting quite old.

It’s a northern/southern thing as described in my previous post.

Thanks. Tea is even more tricky. An Asian would expect a glass of chai and a piece of pastry.

Supper is a treat in SE Asia where we have a 24-hour food culture. It means going out for a prata with your siblings at 2 am or having satay at 4 am after clubbing/drinking. No one actually cooks supper.

The terms used for meals are still social class markers. They’re also influenced by region and generation.

In many working class households, dinner is the midday meal, whereas middle class households refer to this as lunch. The same applies for tea or dinner as the evening meal.

As a fellow northerner, tea is the main evening meal, normally around 6pm and supper is a snack before bed.

I really couldn't be more middle class if I tried, but I'm from Yorkshire, so it was breakfast, dinner, tea and supper for me. It's regional, not a class marker.

Yes I did say it was probably regional or class in an earlier post. This was in reply to a pp.

It is interesting that the English that went out to the rest of the world didnt carry these regional idiosyncracies.

Happy to sound uneducated and lower clarse, here.

It is breakfast, then dinner (sometimes use 'lunch' if it's a lighter dinner), then tea and supper is just before bedtime.

We use a teaspoon 🤷🏻‍♀️

It's what some people call their drawingroom sitting room

Question for Those who call their evening meal “tea”:
What do you call the tea and a slice of cake meal that is eaten at 3.30 ish?
And if you’re meeting friends for tea (meaning tea and cake), how do they know what you’re suggesting?

Don't be so sensitive!

I lived in the States for several years. Came home one time and sister and I went out shopping. I said "I need to go to the bathroom." She took the micky out of me for the rest of the day for that.

We have always called it supper but we are immigrants. I remember being distinctly confused when, as a child, a friend’s parents asked if I would like to stay for tea.

We have breakfast, lunch, supper but go out for dinner and invite friends over for diner. Tea we drink.

“A snack”. Or “tea and cake“

Afternoon tea.

‘Do you fancy a cup of tea?’ as opposed to ‘do you want to go out for tea one night?’

Supper gives me the total ick too. As a northerner I don't hear it used often, but as a young child it was what a bedtime snack was called. Milk and biscuits or cereal if we were particularly hungry at bedtime. Not something adults had and something that was grown out of. The only friend I know who says it (for evening meal) is a very posh southerner who says drawing room, and also still says mummy and daddy despite being in her 50's. So I think it feels posh and also infantile in that same way to me.