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?

At my school, we have lunch at lunch time, with dinner ladies, served in the dining hall 😂

From Norfolk (sadly)
breakfast, lunch, then tea or supper for the evening meal, I use it interchangeably but always used to call ‘tea’s ready!’ to the DC.

afternoon tea is around 3.30 and is tea in a pot with cream tea (we live in Devon now so it’s the law).

I get a "Lunch Break" at work , but it isn't a "Lunch Hour"

Sunday Dinner is just that , a cooked meal (with roast potatoes )

Not a Dinner Hour or Sunday Supper

Luncheon is all shades of wrong and should only be paired with "meat" to make Luncheon Meat

Kitchen Sups is ver' Jilly Cooper , I thought it was "Come for a meal this evening , very casual , whatever we're having "

We have breakfast, lunch and dinner. I knew some people called dinner supper or tea, but had no idea some people called lunch dinner…

It’s always been breakfast, lunch and dinner for me. Born and raised in London…

Yanbu. Supper is a snack just before you get into bed. Bloody southerners! 😄

Out of interest I looked up ‘supper’ in my big fat dictionary.
“An evening meal, typically a light or informal one.’

Origin, from old French.
It does make an exception for specific meals with chips, e.g. ‘a fish supper’!

I grew up on the Surrey/Hampshire border and have always referred to meals as breakfast, lunch and dinner.

My schools were in Surrey and I remember a fair few people referring to the evening meal as “tea”. I still live in the same-ish area and my kids had “tea” at nursery- I assume because they have what might constitute as a main meal at lunch.

As for “supper”, aside from a few people when I was at uni (long time ago now), it’s not really something I’ve ever heard people reference.

So funny! My eyes can't roll any further. I've always had something really stodgy and carby just before bed - it helps me to sleep. BMI of 19 to 20 my whole life - I'm now in my sixties. So I'll ignore your advice if it's all the same to you.

I grew up in the South, working class. Supper was usually cheese and biscuits or crumpets but only if we had had an early dinner ie 5pm; I miss suppers as we eat late due to work.

Luncheon meat is all kinds of wrong, it is a hopeless attempt to make spam sound posh

I call it tea 😊 what difference does it make what she calls it?

Northern. It's breakfast, dinner, tea under my roof. If I had a table in my kitchen I'd essentially raise my kitchen floor to the height of a table top. Love the word 'frock' (and Welsh equivalent 'ffrog', pronounced 'frog'). Am trying to repopularise 'cheerio' (can't remember why) if anyone wants to help 😊

Me too! It's so twee and performative.

OP I'd tell her you're going no contact.

I really don't think there's any other way round this 😂

I’ve always had breakfast, lunch and dinner never supper. I assume it’s a snack after dinner? Never understood tea to me that’s a drink . From West Midlands

Lunch is in the afternoon.

Dinner is in the evening.

At home we had breakfast, dinner and tea, maybe cheese and biscuits for supper at weekends. My dad worked 9-5

My auntie who was "posh" had breakfast, lunch, high tea (4pm served by her "daily"and consisting of little sandwiches with the crusts cut off) then dinner 7pm, because her husband worked later.

IMO it doesn't matter, just like the regional difference between baps, barm cakes, torpedo rolls, finger rolls, soda bread, bread buns and bagels.
But that's another thread.....

Supper is perfectly OK, a light meal in the evening as opposed to dinner which is more. Why are you objecting, dees it matter?

Oh, interesting! I assumed it was just a northern thing as I'd never heard southerners using it. It seems not then.

My family says breakfast, lunch and tea, which I imagine is a result of a Lancashire DGM being transplanted to London. Also we had our evening meal early, at 6pm, as a child, because my parents often worked in the evening (adult education). Supper is definitely a late night snack unless you’re David Cameron.

She’s just fitting in with her new location. Lunch and supper are normal. No snobbery at all.
Let her be.

I only know two people who call it supper and they're both pretentious as fuck.

It’s regional, there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ and of course if people move regions they’re likely to change their language to match the local dialect. Growing up I ate breakfast, lunch and dinner but I moved up north around a decade ago and now eat breakfast, dinner and tea. At first it felt strange to call what I knew as dinner tea (and to call what I knew as tea a brew) but it feels completely normal now.

Ultimately if you move regions you usually spend far more time talking to local friends, colleagues etc than you do with friends/ family living hours away and it would become confusing in everyday conversation if you refused to change your lingo. I would refer to dinner and people would assume I meant a lunchtime meal, it gets tiring to say ‘oh I mean tea’s after a while you just start using tea and after a bit longer that becomes your normal. Some people are good at code switching so they naturally would go back to their original dialect when around friends/ family from their home town but other people aren’t so good at this and the new dialect becomes their normal.

It sounds like calling her evening meal supper has become normal for your sister because that’s what she’s around every day, it’s jarring for you but surely in that case you can see why her normal has changed, because if she hadn’t adapted she would be having those kind of jarring moments multiple times over a week with all of the people she sees everyday rather than just occasionally with family members who live far enough away she presumably doesn’t see them often.

Go NC immediately
Supper is a bit of toast or cereal before bed if your tea didn't fill you up enough
She will be sticking a R in Bath and a U in Room before you know it

Oh that is so cringe. I'm from the South East and don't know anyone who says the word supper, let alone in place of the word dinner