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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Having ‘a cuppa’

537 replies

ConstantlyFuriosa · 19/04/2026 10:49

Why does this sentence infuriate me so? I already know I’m probably being unreasonable but it’s so grating. I can’t be the only one?

OP posts:
BringBackCatsEyes · 23/04/2026 08:18

NormasArse · 23/04/2026 07:54

They are in my house 🤷‍♀️.

If we eat around 5-6, it’s tea; if we eat around 8, it’s supper.

If it’s a large meal, it’s dinner (but we rarely have a large meal in the evening, unless we go out).

You can’t tell other people how to name their meals 😂.

Edited

IKR - it's quite extreme to be infuriated by people who call a lighter meal later in the day supper. It's a recognised meaning of supper.

beeeeeeez · 23/04/2026 09:22

When I briefly had Welsh lessons I learnt that 'Ti'n isio paned?' literally translates to 'do you want a cuppa?' Paned = cup (common) Cwpanaid = cupful (formal).

I use cuppa, or brew without cringe.

ForCosyLion · 24/04/2026 06:19

NormasArse · 23/04/2026 07:54

They are in my house 🤷‍♀️.

If we eat around 5-6, it’s tea; if we eat around 8, it’s supper.

If it’s a large meal, it’s dinner (but we rarely have a large meal in the evening, unless we go out).

You can’t tell other people how to name their meals 😂.

Edited

I can! Your meal names are all wrong. Why don't you just go the whole hog and call your evening meal breakfast and your breakfast dinner, since you're getting it all wrong anyway! 🤭🤣 First thing in the morning, you could have a lovely dinner of toast and cereal; then tea at midday of soup or sandwiches; and then sometime 5pm-8pm, a nice hot breakfast of chicken breasts, potatoes and vegetables. And then elevenses at 11pm. 🤪 Would make the same amount of sense! 🤭🤭🤭

ForCosyLion · 24/04/2026 06:45

BringBackCatsEyes · 23/04/2026 08:18

IKR - it's quite extreme to be infuriated by people who call a lighter meal later in the day supper. It's a recognised meaning of supper.

Only in the up-itself parts of London and the Home Counties. Supper came from the north, and means a light snack shortly before bed. Supper is NOT any kind of meal! Snack only. Calling a meal eaten at dinnertime, light or otherwise, supper, means you're a soft Southern blouse. Makes me see red. 🤣 Supper is eaten no earlier than 10pm and is just a light bite, always cold, and a hot drink. How does everyone not KNOW this! 🤭 I find it greatly upsetting.

I don't mean to be a reverse snob, but it's only pretentious twats from some parts of the south-east who call their evening meal supper. The idea is that "dinner" is a formal event in your ancestral dining room and involves the whole tiaras-for-married women rigmarole. To distinguish between the formal dinner that you doubtless have two or three times a week, entertaining local dignitaries and fellow aristos, you refer to the meal on regular evenings as supper, lest Cook get confused and think that on Thursday, the hordes are coming, when actually you only need a fish pie for four. The aristos probably got the idea from their workers who called their bedtime snack supper. They needed a bedtime snack because they were manual workers who had their main meal at midday, so they just had tea when they got home - by which I mean sandwiches etc, not anything hot! THAT's why they had a bedtime snack, called supper, because they hadn't had anything every substantial since midday.

And then the twats and wannabes of today continue to refer to the evening meal, the main meal of the day, as supper, because they think it sounds posh to differentiate between formal dinners and regular meal nights. It doesn't; for the people who actually know what meals are meant to be called, it sounds completely and utterly pretentious, unless you actually ARE an aristocrat who holds formal dinners twice a week.

Even Louis XIV knew that you don't have supper before 10pm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supper

When someone refers to supper when they mean dinner, I want to rip their arm off and beat them about the head with it, although I don't get worked up about it.

For those in the cheap seats, it's like this:
Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner
Supper (maybe)
Tea - sandwiches, cakes etc. and cups of tea - is usually only served around 5pm at the weekends now. If you're an aristocrat who doesn't work and hosts formal dinners, you might have afternoon tea at 4 with sandwiches during the week, as you might not be eating till eight.

Let's not go there with people who call their main evening meal tea.

Mumteedum · 24/04/2026 07:49

@ForCosyLion as much as I enjoyed that, I came from the North, like supper according to you .... And while I greatly appreciate the southern blouse = supper thing, I only call lunch lunch because my parents weren't from where I grew up..... North east is def breakfast, dinner and tea and optional supper.

Lunchtime school staff are dinner nannies where I'm from! I used dinner and tea fairly interchangeably.

Actual high tea baffles me. When you see a costume drama I feel like they never stop eating. Breakfast lunch tea dinner or is it supper...way too many meals.

JuliettaCaeser · 24/04/2026 07:52

Argh we call our evening meal tea. So does everyone I know?! “What’s for tea” etc. some Americans we knew were baffled by this !

Tinmanwalkedpastwindeh · 24/04/2026 07:53

YANBU it's a brew

WhatAboutSecondBreakfast86 · 24/04/2026 08:14

Breakfast
Second Breakfast
Elevensies
Luncheon
Afternoon tea
Dinner
Supper

Does anyone actually say LUNCHEON anymore? 😂

WhatAboutSecondBreakfast86 · 24/04/2026 08:18

SALaw · 20/04/2026 06:56

Ok none of that makes sense tbh. The common denominator of the orders from the chippy is the chips not the fish. And you’re saying the abbreviation for Chinese is “chippy”?!

See to me Fish shop would be an establishment that sells live fish for keeping in tanks or ponds

BauhausOfEliott · 24/04/2026 10:32

It's not at all twee to me. It's not a recent thing like 'holibobs' or 'Crimbo'. My grandparents used to say it and they were cockneys born in the 1910s.

I'm a Londoner who lives in Manchester. My northern colleagues say 'a brew', I say 'a cuppa'.

I also constantly 'put the kettle on' because I drink about eight mugs of tea a day.

If you find it annoying, so be it. I'll live.

ForCosyLion · 26/04/2026 01:31

WhatAboutSecondBreakfast86 · 24/04/2026 08:14

Breakfast
Second Breakfast
Elevensies
Luncheon
Afternoon tea
Dinner
Supper

Does anyone actually say LUNCHEON anymore? 😂

YES! My mother-in-law, who is an 87-year-old posho, says luncheon and also drawing room!!! To be fair, the drawing room in her last home was absolutely a drawing room, very grand proportions, but her current one is much smaller, and she probably doesn't call it that. I'm separated from her son, so haven't seen her in ages.

P.S. I think she uses luncheon to mean a lunch party or a daytime event where lunch is served. As in, "The gardening day at Wisley includes a luncheon." I don't think she uses it to mean soup and a sandwich at home.

eggandonion · 26/04/2026 09:28

If dh is having lunch with people in work in an organised way we call it luncheon. We read a biography a few years ago which involved a lot of luncheon.
A luncheon meat sandwich is lunch...if it still exists.

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