British/American language question

[tex111]

Can someone help me understand the vocabulary when it comes to understanding the various meals in a day. Silly, I know, but it's been bugging me for ages. As I understand it it goes something like this:

Breakfast - early morning meal. Can be simple like cereal or toast or more elaborate like a fry up.

Brunch - around 11.00 and usually more elaborate like eggs benedict or quiche

Lunch - midday meal. Often something cold like a sandwich or salad or something simple like soup but can be a more elaborate hot meal.

Tea - 3.00. Consisting of light sandwiches, scones, cakes, and of course tea.

Dinner - early evening meal around 5.00-7.00. Hot meal, usually meat and two veg and maybe dessert.

Supper - late evening meal, 9.00 or later. Usually something simple like cold meats, cheeses and breads or maybe leftovers.

My confusion comes from things like 'school dinners' - why are they called that when they're the midday meal? And 'Wedding Breakfast' which I've had in the afternoon and consisted of a roast. And I've heard some people refer to their evening meal as 'tea'. I'd like to understand the differences. Are there historical reasons or is there just something I'm missing? Thanks so much for your help.

[acnebride]

Pudding = posh and/or hot pudding
Dessert = last course of the meal with nuts, fruit, cheese
Sweet - Ok i'm not going there, I'm too much of a snob
Afters ditto

[expatinscotland]

My little daughter barely sits down to her tea before demanding 'A puddy! A puddy!' Loves her pudding she does!

[tex111]

Uh oh, I thought pudding, dessert, sweet and afters were basically the same thing. Is there a difference?

What about startes and appetisers?

[tex111]

Oops, crossed posts acnebride.

It's funny, I've heard Nigella Lawson refer to something like a chocolate cake as 'not really a pudding' and didn't understand what she meant. I guess she was saying that cake is more of a 'tea' food (in the traditional sense) and a pudding should be hot?

[pabla]

When I was a kid we always had our main meal in the middle of the day, which we called dinner (I grew up in a small market town in Ireland.) Most schoolkids went home for an hour for this between 1 and 2 pm and lots of fathers did too if they worked locally (as mine did.) We then had "tea" at about 6pm. I think the reason people had their main meal in the middle of the day was a carry-over from when most people worked on farms and the men needed a substantila meal to re-fuel due to the strenuous work they did.

So I suppose it is a working class/rural type of tradition. Has pretty much died out everywhere now I think? My mum is very grateful it has - imagine trying to get the main meal cooked in the morning plus making beds (no duvets in those days!) and washing clothes (without an automatic washing machine)

[acnebride]

don't pabla, you're so right. can't get my head round what women (and men) hvae to do without labour-saving.

just read 'the Victorian house' part of which lists what servants had to do every day. God. dh got pretty short shrift when he whinged about unloading the dishwasher

[pabla]

And I used to think supper and tea were the same thing but I also have a posh friend who uses it to imply a casual dinner.

[snafu]

Pudding, dessert, sweet and afters are all the same thing, but should only be called pudding

A pudding is traditionally hot, I suppose, but something like a trifle would also be regarded as pudding. Cake is cake, and not pudding, and is for eating at tea-time (not dinner) or scoffing in secret at anytime.

[acnebride]

tex111, as of these days they basically are the same thing. from my pov it's a class/region thing but i can't get rid of my snobbish upbringing. actually, i'm quite obviously not trying to.

[acnebride]

cake is for proving that your children can talk - 'do you want a sandwich darling?' (silence) - 'what about a peach?' (silence) - 'would you like some cake?' 'YUH'

[LilacLotus]

i find this all a confusing issue.
with me it's breakfast (morning), lunch (midday) and dinner/tea (at about 5pm). anything else is a snack!

[frogs]

Ha ha, bet you wished you'd never asked! It's all about class and region, as you've probably worked out, and everybody thinks their terminology is right, and other people's wrong/common/snobbish/take your pick.

In my universe breakfast is breakfast (duh), at lunchtime you have lunch (somewhere between 12-2pm), tea is a cup of tea possibly with biscuits and cake (3-5pm) and in the evening you have supper (7-9pm), unless it's formal and/or you have friends round in which case it's dinner. An odd exception is school dinners, which were always called that even though they were clearly lunches. Unless you take packed ones, in which case they are packed lunches.

Actually it's all just a giant conspiracy to confuse foreigners.

[tarantula]

so does noone else have elevenses then? Which is amid morning cup of coffee/tea and a biscuit/snack taken surprisingly around about 11?

[Janh]

I have elevenses on and off all day, tarantula

[Littlefish]

For me it's

Breakfast
Lunch
Supper (sometimes called dinner if we are having people round and I'm doing posh food with pudding!)

[LilacLotus]

oh and my DD is asking for a 'second breakfast' every day.

[fqueenzebra]

i thought there was a big northern/southern (English) thing influencing who said "tea" (northern) or "dinner" (southern) as the evening meal. "Dinner" def. is supposed to be your main hot meal of the day, though, whenever it occurs.

[PiccadillyCircus]

For me, it ia

breakfast
elevenses (drink and biscuit etc around 11)
lunch (unless it is Sunday in which case dinner)
tea (at around 4 - cakes etc)
dinner (unless Sunday when it is supper)

But since meeting (and marrying DH) things get a bit more complicated.

breakfast
coffee time
lunch
tea
supper (always, whatever it is).

Don't think he would ever use the word dinner. And then there are always things like brunch and various snacks.

When I was at school, other people would have

breakfast
dinner
snack
tea (evening meal)
supper (ie cocoa)

but I was persuaded by my mum this was common.

So many words for the same things .

[tex111]

It's so interesting how mobile language is in the UK. In my experience in the States we tend to be very specific and very literal. Other than dinner and supper which basically mean the same thing but are used by different types of people (country people would be more likely to say supper and city people dinner) the other meals use the same word wherever you are. Unless there are some expats who'd like to correct me on that. Must admit that my experience of the US is mostly in the South.

[KateandtheGirls]

Haven't read the whole thread, but growing up in the north of England we called the midday meal "dinner" and the evening meal "tea" regardless of what it was. Now that I live in the States I've adopted their usage (also the same as the south of England as far as I know): breakfast, lunch and dinner. Although my (American) mother in law uses the word "supper" when it's casual and informal, "dinner" if it's more fancy or in a restaurant.

[lucy5]

I find it fascinating, here in Spain I've had to get my head around different times. Afternoon can be anything up to about 10 in extreme cases. People would say lets meet in the afternoon and mean 6 or 7 o'clock.

The other diffrence I have noticed between North American English and British English is sick and ill. My Canadian friend says that she is sick and at first I thought she was a hypochondriac because she only had a cold.

I was at her house a few weeks ago with an merican friend and during the conversation I used the words dustmen and they both started giggling, they had just read Victorian House and found my antiquated English highly amusing.

[tex111]

Lucy5,, that's funny. I've been told that some of my American English sounds very old-fashioned. Words like stove instead of cooker and galoshes instead of wellies. I guess some old words stick in one country and evolve in the other one.

[Chandra]

My most emabarrasing American/English mistake is when I started telling the husband of a DH's coworker that the school I attended required girls to use grey pants. but very, very embarrased whe I finally understood why he was feeling a bit uncomfortable with the conversation )

[Chandra]

Another puzling thing is when somebody ask you something saying "do you mind if..."?

In US, if you say "no" that means they can go ahead

In the UK the same is understood if you say "yes".