Tea? Supper? Dinner?

[FeelingEvil]

What's the difference?

Oh dear, there doesn't seem to be a definitive answer, so the battle continues between DH and I over this issue.
(Really doesn't help that both of us were taught English as a second language.)

Tea is either a drink or a small meal at 4pmish.

We always used to have 'tea' at my nans, sandwiches, cakes and a pot of tea.
If the children's friends come over to eat, they have 'tea' whereas DP and I will have 'dinner' later.

Normally we all have 'dinner' together at about 6pm, except weekends, when we sometimes have 'tea'(snacky, buffet type thing, agree with uqd, a proper meal like lasagne or sheperds pie, is not tea) and 'supper'(small meal after 7pm).

A meal in the middle of the day is lunch, unless it's a full English at 11am, like on sundays, then it's brunch.

vs we would call that 'afternoon tea'

where I come from (north) it's breakfast dinner and tea, supper is something you have just before bed. Live in London now, dp gets confused. It's supposed to be breakfast, lunch and dinner/supper down here, but at dc's school, they're called dinner ladies, not lunch ladies.

We have 'lunchtime supervisors'.

The sandwiches thing at my nans, yes, afternoon tea, but what about the children's friends coming for 'tea' is that just 'tea'?

OK here is what MR Henry Russell says in his etiquette book.

"Supper is the meal eaten after attendance at the theatre. Any other meal between sunset and sunrise is dinner."

Another interesting point (this book is full of useful stuff) is that if you have the daughter of an earl coming to dinner, on the place card you would write

Lady Husband's forename and Family name.

So that is clear then.

Mrs B is right as usual!

Dinner has to be at lunch-time, innit, because otherwise why are school dinner ladies called 'dinner' ladies?

I am a confused person. I was born and brought up in the midlands, my parents are southerners, and I'm married to a northerner. Round here the schedule is as follows:

6am DS has breakfast of milk.
7am Mummy and daddy have breakfast.
9am DS has "second breakfast" of milk followed by rice, and mummy has a sneaky biscuit.
12 pm DS has lunch of something, usually orange, followed by milk.
1-3pm (if she remembers) mummy has whatever she can find in the house to eat. I usually lightly term this "lunch"
3pm DS has "afternoon tea" of milk, mummy has more biscuits, or cake if she can get it.
6pm DS has tea of mashed banana and rice and milk. Mummy and daddy rush about.
7:30 DS has supper of milk, and goes to bed.
8pm Mummy and daddy have tea.
11 pm DS has "second supper" of milk while he's asleep. Mummy sometimes has a bowl of cereal.

Lots of meals in our house!

orange colour, not citrus fruit, btw.

About that school dinner thing - it was school dinners or packed lunch as a choice when I was at school, eaten in the same hall at the same time. I suppose the difference there, theoretically, is hot or cold meals. Strange.

Not that anyone really cares, just that I wanted to make my meaning clear. Cos I'm constitutively pedantic.

It's all chips as far as I'm concerned. If there was any justice in the world. Which there isn't.

By BarcodeZebra on Tue 27-May-08 21:11:59
It's all chips as far as I'm concerned. If there was any justice in the world. Which there isn't.

"if there were any..." surely?

[stalker]

Depending on when dinner is (because that is the main mean of the day) then you would have lunch or supper. However if you eat before dusk it's tea and after it's supper, you can have tea and supper!!

Yes, school has dinner ladies and children have dinner money. But you'd never ask someone "out to tea".

I'm from the US South. The evening meal is supper in the traditional parlance, although most people will refer to it as dinner. Tea is a beverage with ice, lemon and sugar to be drunk all year round on its own or with food.

DH is from a family of labourers. Dinner is lunch and tea is the evening meal.

What Mrs.Badger said.

Tea is a drink, or something you have a 4pm involving scones or cake and a pot of tea.

Dinner is an evening meal that is quite formal, or involves guests and a few courses, or is eaten in a restaurant.

Supper is the usual evening meal.

Only state schools have dinner ladies and dinner money. At the public school I went to we had lunch and lunchtime supervisors iirc

To me, your main meal is dinner - whether it's eaten in the middle of the day or in the evening.
So you have breakfast, dinner and tea or breakfast, lunch and dinner.
This suits the 'dinner lady' thing because school dinners were traditionally designed so that they were the largest meal a child ate during the day.

When I was a sixth form college we had:
Breakfast at 7.30 - fry up or cereal and toast
Break at 10.30 - crisps, cake, chocolate etc.
Lunch at 12.30 - sandwiches or soup followed by fruit or similar
Tea at 4.00 - biscuits, cake, tea
Dinner at 6.00 - 'main meal' like pie, lasagne etc followed by hot pudding
Supper at 9.30 - toast, sandwiches, cakes etc.
No wonder we all last weight when we left!

Ahem, we lost weight, of course.

I'm with Mrs Badger, (and I come under the 'posh' category!)

Breakfast 7.30, lunch 1.30, afternoon tea 4, supper 8.30. And occasionally I go out to dinner in the evening, or I may invite close friends or family around mid-week for supper.

What Mrs Badger says - Ds rather confused as we (southerners, up't'north have supper, go out to dinner and have lunch at lunchtime, but Ds has dinner at nursery in the middle of the day.

Its interesting that inviting someone for 'tea' - what you get depends on who's been invited. If you invite an adult you expect a cup of tea and perhaps a cake. If you invite a child, you would be expected to feed them a lightish meal perhaps?

For me it's "tea" if I eat at home "dinner" if I go out eat. But if a friend said they'd be bobbing round at "teatime" I would assume that was 5/6pm even though I eat tea at 7:30.

it all dates back to edwardian times, (the inventors of ettiquette btw) Dinner is the main meal of the day, working classes and therefore many northerners would have their main meal of the day at lunch time cos they would need energy in daytime to work, and its cheaper to prepare food in daylight hours, rich people would have their main meal in the evening.

Tea was started by colonials in india who would have a cup of tea and sandwich or soemthing at 4pm. tiffin which is an indian custom, i think, then brought that back to england

oh pedants1 just realised I spelt etiquette wrong, forgive me !

More than one southern exile I know has been wrongfooted by a Yorkshire tradesman's promise to pop round "after dinnertime" to look at a job"!