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I have breakfast, lunch and supper. If I invite you for supper it's probably to have what Mrs TwoThree and I are having, for dinner to have something a bit more special. When I was young I had high tea and didn't stay up for supper. Pudding was anything from fruit salad to steamed pudding *. I suppose that I must be thoroughly middle class.

What about you? Is Thanksgiving Dinner in the evening? Did you have dinner or lunch at school or at home? Is your supper a late meal a few hours after your tea? Dessert, pudding, sweet or afters?
I'm not curious from a classist point of view, merely linguistic.

*This censorship is daft, I can't even write "spotted dikc" and spell it correctly. One day we should exhaustively see what we can get away with. We could try expressions like "Swive me sideways" or "my pego".

I grew up with breakfast - dinner (mid-day) and tea (evening). For some reason I can never perfectly adapt to the international standard usage of "dinner", and even sometimes end up saying "lunch" when I mean an evening meal.

I grew up (U.S.-Detroit) with breakfast, lunch and supper. When I moved out to California, it became breakfast, lunch, and dinner. "Supper" sounds weird now. Just shows what 35 years of usage can do.

I think "dinner" originally meant the main cooked meal of the day. In Britain this was the mid day meal in schools in the 19th centuary 'cos some children had little else. In Britain this use persisted well into the second half of the 20th centuary. We used to talk about "dinner time" for the noon time break.

People at work, however tended to talk about lunch break.

The evening meal was usually not cooked, like the lumberjack in the song we used to have buttered scones for "tea" preceeded by bread and butter with jam. I note the song talked about eating "lunch". The later verses do not describe me at all I hasten to add.

Breakfast and supper if you had it were always breakfast and supper in my day.

I think that things are now beginning to standardise as breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper.

Interesting. I'm sure that "school dinners" is very much in current use: it googles at 23,300 for UK pages, versus 13,700 for "school lunches". Though some of the former are historical or nostalgic, plenty are the schools themselves: "School Meals. If you would like your child to have a school dinner it should be on a regular basis. We expect all children to have ... " . "Lunches" seems to be favoured by Government web sites.

Whereas for me "dinner" is a posher evening meal "dinner party" "dinner jacket" "formal dinner".

I didn't know that citizens of our late colonies in the Americas used "supper" at all. We live and learn.

When I was a kid, "supper" meant a hot drink before bedtime. The evening meal was called "tea", even if it was a full meal (e.g. "What's for tea, Mum?" "Sausages and chips").

I get the feeling that "tea" has been replaced by "dinner" in the UK to mean the evening meal, though social class may well be a determining factor in what you call it.

It was not uncommon in the 70's, when women were going out to work more, for a husband to say "I don't mind her having a job so long as the tea (i.e. meal) is on the table when I get home."

In Australia, we always had breakfast (or brekkie), lunch and tea. Tea was the cooked meal in the evening when everyone was at home. On Sundays, we had "Sunday lunch" which was always a lamb roast. If we had anything after the meal it was pudding, even if that was only ice cream. At school, we had little lunch (morning tea) and big lunch (real lunch). If we ever had dinner, it was a formal meal in the evening, often with invited guests, or if we went out to eat, and of course, on the weekends we always had a barbie.

If we had anything after the meal it was pudding.

That reminds me, in primary and junior. school it was always "afters", there's sth U don't hear these days. I think class had sth to do with that.

Pudding is another word that has changed its meaning. It originally meant any food, now it only means dessert, except for a few cases like black pudding, delicious.

Did anyone else have "elevenses"? When we visited my grandmother, she would insist on us having a snack at 11.00, but my parents' generation seems to have given them a miss.

Elevenses of course. But only a couple of chocolate biscuits and and a hot drink.

Spanish has "almorzar" and "comer" : " have a spot of lunch" , at twelvish and then " EAT" starting at anything from 2.00 to even 4.00.

So to sum up. As a true citizen of the world I should have a Little Breakfast (petit dejeuner) then later a Full English Breakfast. Then Elevenses followed by a Spot of Lunch (Little Lunch). I would then have (Big)Lunch after some appetite inducing aperitifs. A substantial Afternoon Tea. After that Tea, High Tea, Supper or Dinner and a Late Night Snack or Supper. Plus the odd cosmopolitan takeaway when I get peckish between meals, always supposing the concept "between meals" has any real meaning.

Don't Hobbits do something similar? In their case it's probably the munchies after all that weed.

As a true citizen of the world I should have a Little Breakfast (petit dejeuner) then later a Full English Breakfast. Then Elevenses followed by a Spot of Lunch (Little Lunch). I would then have (Big)Lunch after some appetite inducing aperitifs. A substantial Afternoon Tea. After that Tea, High Tea, Supper or Dinner and a Late Night Snack or Supper. Plus the odd cosmopolitan takeaway when I get peckish between meals, always supposing the concept "between meals" has any real meaning.

After that lot, Juan, you would probably more resemble the world itself than be a citizen of it.

Haha,

breakfast - first meal of the day (generally in the morning)
lunch - generally the second meal between 11-2
dinner - could be 'lunch' or could be 'supper;
supper - the meal in the evening between 5-8

I use both dinner and supper for the evening meal, but we spoke of this in a linguistics class. We came to the conclusion that for most of us (American English speakers), dinner (whether at midday or in the evening) was the term used for a generally larger meal and for any meal for a festive purpose (i.e. Christmas dinner, Thanksgiving dinner, etc.).

Of course, my grandmother uses (dounner ou as in "would") to be either the lunchtime meal of the dinner meal, but she does pronounce it oddly.

Also, on campus tonight there is a "midnight breakfast". It starts at 11 p.m. and will consist of typical breakfast food (eggs, pancakes, juice, etc.).

In addition, I can eat two breakfasts or two lunches or two dinners or two suppers in a day. It also seems to have to do with the content of the meal and if I eat earlier one day. Let's say I normally wake up at 9a.m., but today I couldn't. I eat at 7a.m. and then later at 9 (when I get hungry since I usually eat then). I would call that breakfast, but I could also call it lunch since it's the second meal depending on what I have and when (it does seem like it couldn't be dinner though since that would have to take place after 11 or 12, in the afternoon).

Kevin