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?

Posh southerners distinguish between a casual dinner (say shepherds pie or something) and a more formal dinner (where you’ve invited people over, do three courses plus cheese board etc)

And what do posh northerners do? They do exist!

Surrey gets a bad rap on MN.

Supper where I'm from is two Weetabix with milk and sugar and dressing for supper means wearing jim jams.

Posh northerners still just call it dinner or tea!

When we move, our 'norm' changes. I didn't know as a child that living room, napkin, loo were not universal. They were just how we talked. Then when I moved up north, I found out that lunch was called dinner here. Meh.

I call midday meal lunch, afternoon snack afternoon snack and the evening meal dinner

Dinner = what you have in the middle of the day.

Tea = evening meal

Supper = posh bastard

Not a hill to die on.

I often call it supper, but then I hail from Surrey. 😊

Ex was a northerner, supper to him was a bowl of crunchy nut before bed. 🤢 Fortunately, he's ex so I no longer have to deal with this outrageousness.

Hahahahaha. I'm not with the posh wankery of supper. Dinner all the way.

Do you have tea with your tea?

Posh people don't have wee snacks before bed - they're disciplined and not gluttons!

One of the original meanings of supper (possibly the actual original meaning but I'm not totally sure) was an informal meal ie not a formal dinner, so a meal with friends. In the 80s, posh people had kitchen suppers with friends rather than dinners, to indicate no need to dress up and that the food would be more informal.

The evening meal was supper if with family, or dinner if a formal event.

It has an additional meaning of a light meal but that's not the only meaning and I'm not sure when that meaning came into being.

Why is your version of supper correct and you’re sisters version is not.

Yep, can’t beat a mug of tea.

Is it not an oxymoron?

(ducking for the onslaught!!!!!!!!!!)

Northerner living in the south here.
Breakfast in the morning
Lunch in the middle of the day but it's dinner if it's a big meal, like Sunday roast
Dinner in the evening unless it's a smaller meal like something on toast, then it's tea
Supper when we go to our posh friends for an evening meal

So it's linked to meal size for me.

I’m in Ireland, not the UK, but I’ve never heard supper used as a term for a late snack. I thought it was a word upper class (or pretentious) people used for dinner?

I always thought that funny because it’s also the term my Irish farming grandparents used for their evening meal (dinner was earlier…breakfast, dinner, supper.)
Just a quirk of how the language evolved in different places I suppose.

Supper is not a piece of toast at bed. It’s a meal.
dinner just is a general term for a meal.

its breakfast lunch and supper.
we had lunch ladies in school.

tea is literally tea - drink with coffee and biscuits mid afternoon

My parents always had "supper" so that was what I called the evening meal. And we were not posh at all, we lived in a council flat on the roughest estate in Croydon.

At some point in my early adulthood, I started to call it "dinner", I suspect it was when I left home and shared a flat with friends. The midday meal was always lunch, and I never knew anyone who called it dinner until I was much older. They came from Lancashire, and I assumed it was a northern thing.

"Tea" is a light meal, with cakes and sandwiches, the like of which you have in tea rooms.

You don't have people round for supper!!!!
You can have supper as your evening meal, that's allowed. But if you invite people round it becomes dinner. You invite people for dinner. Supper is immediate family only, maybe a child's friend after a playdate staying for supper (not invited for dinner).

Supper is served at the kitchen table. Dinner is served at the dining table.

What you are really objecting to is that you feel your sister is moving in different circles from you and you want her to stay put.

Given how she has deeply betrayed your heritage and identity I'd write her 20 page late explaining the ways in which her language use has hurt you and then block her on all your phones/email and go NC for 20 years.

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.

Do the men have to play golf as well? BIL took it up after the move. Now I get he wants to make new friends but it's weird as he used to refer to the "golf wankers in their BMWs" who used t get too close when he was out cycling.

My sister has started doing the same, I imagine them eating in their jim jams cuddling a hottie bottie and a teddy.

Naw, that's a Glasgow salad.

Bloody love that.