Thus, today it is only the considered type of meaning which is becoming standard in the English-speaking world. Lunch is a meal often taken during the afternoon times, which comprises of all salads and afternoon food stuffs. The lunch meal is the second heaviest meal eaten after breakfast. There are several varieties of lunch and their types available at the known restaurants in the world today. Supper is an evening meal; often used interchangeably with dinner.
Traditionally, suppers were separate type of meals. The meal largely refers to a light type of meal, which can be a late-evening snack or soup sort of. The term is broadly taken in an informal way. Supper is often taken only at home places; they are never opted as choices when on an outdoor trips. Hence, the clear distinction between dinner, lunch and supper can be classified due to their types and meal timings.
What do you call the meal that you eat at the end of the day? Do you call it dinner or supper? Your answer might depend on where you grew up or how old you are. The words have shifted in meaning as dining habits have changed. And now onto the main course A contemporary restaurant, for example, might indicate its dinner hours as late in the afternoon or during the evening:.
A bar menu will be offered from 4 p. Monday through Friday and 3 p. The same restaurant might serve lunch during the hours of am to 2 pm, or adjust those hours for what it calls brunch on the weekend. But the use of dinner to refer to the main meal of the day, eaten as the last meal of the day, is a relatively recent phenomenon. For a long time, that main meal was held during the middle part of the day, around or slightly after the time we would nowadays allot for lunch.
What was then called supper was a lighter meal taken toward the end of the day. When he returns from his rumpus with the Wild Things, that supper is waiting for him in his room and it is still hot. Many British writers of the 18th and 19th centuries made distinctions between dinner and supper much the way we might today for lunch and dinner.
Whether my lord used to make himself uneasy for want of mine or other company, I cannot tell, but the servants complained every day, as I heard by Amy, that his lordship ate little or nothing, and would sometimes shed tears when he sat down by himself to breakfast, dinner , or supper ; and, indeed, I began to think that he looked very thin, his countenance grew pale, and that he had every other sign of a grieved or broken heart.
It is somewhere about five or six o'clock in the afternoon, and a balmy fragrance of warm tea hovers in Cook's Court. It hovers about Snagsby's door. The hours are early there: dinner at half-past one and supper at half-past nine. Henry Baker," said Holmes when he had closed the door behind him.
From Maryland: I've always understood DINNER as a large in size and attendence , with a "main dish" usually meat with many accompanying sides, and possibly a formal gathering, main evening meal; and SUPPER as a small, intimate among family "single pot" meal like soup, casserole, or pot pie.
Sometimes supper would come after an early dinner like on holidays and would be made from dinner leftovers. Most days went breakfast—lunch—dinner, on weekends breakfast—dinner—supper, or breakfast—lunch—dinner—supper, or busy days out of the house might be breakfast—lunch—late supper. Dinner is a more formal term for the end of the day meal which usually includes the accompanying of friends, a date, business partners, or persons other than just family and usually included cocktails prior to the meal.
Cigars and Brandy is a time mostly for men after a dinner and is surely a southern term not used much at all anymore. In my travels around this country and much of the world and in my old age, I have come to agree with the "Humpty Dumpty" reference above.
To add some more to the subject, in the Republican Party US ran the campaign slogan "Four years more and the full dinner pail. Clearly a successful national party would not be referring to what we now call a "lunch box" as a "dinner pail" if there was no general understanding of what "dinner" meant.
This suggests to me that "lunch" had not yet arrived as the usual term for midday meal in the US. And, the campaign could not have been aimed at the agrarian South, as the Republican Party had little traction there; the South was still solidly Democratic.
Also, this could not be a slogan to attract Western farmers, as farmers usually did not take their meals with them into the fields. The "dinner bell" must have been ringing for a lot of people outside agriculture at the time. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top.
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Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. There's actually quite a bit of variation in different regions of the US. As I said, it's quite common to hear Dinner as the noontime meal in many areas of the American South. These differences have tended to mix up and get confused as people from different regions have mixed, and I've noticed "lunch" used for noonday meals much more unilaterally by today's young generations.
Mitch: As an American, I'd mostly agree with Matthias that "lunch" refers to a noon-time meal and "supper" to an evening meal regardless of size, while "dinner" specifically refers to a larger or more formal meal.
That said, people often use "dinner" to refer to an evening meal regardless of the size. I think the usage is a little ambiguous there. PS I've lived most of my life in Ohio and Michigan, maybe the usage is different in other parts of the country. When a kid we only used supper but now only dinner. My grandfather a farmer in NE Oklahoma would regularly refer to a large midday meal as "supper". Drew Well, according to the New Oxford American the source I used when answering above , supper derives directly from to sup , which is derived from the Old French super to suck, sip , which I would take to be the predecessor of the modern French souper.
Looking at Wiktionary, however, I do see the sourcing for soper , though I don't see a specific citation for that. To sup seems to have quite complicated dual etymologies on Wiktionary, so the full histories might be a bit too entangled to know for certain. Show 3 more comments. Callithumpian Callithumpian That link needs to be in this site's 'tool box' along with the other dictionaries and etymonline and such.
In terms of those maps: xkcd. Amory yes, the first thought that came to my mind, before i saw your comment : — semantax. Amory: Thank you. I was looking to make the same point. And to point out that I see little in the way of a trend or takeaway from the figure posted here: each of the maps seems to be essentially the same relative distribution. Robin Green Robin Green 3 3 silver badges 10 10 bronze badges. A funny article on the topic in question, which might provide deeper insight into the cultural differences involved.
When I went to Yorkshire last year in a weekend trip, I heard for the first time people referring to the noon-time meal as dinner and also to dessert as pudding "what's for pudding?
Yeah, when at school, they were school dinners and we had dinner ladies. It makes sense because "dinner" is what you call it when you make an effort, whereas a sandwich in a box is merely "lunch".
But it's important to be aware of the inconsistencies. Some people who typically call their midday meal "dinner" would, on a day when they have a light midday meal, call it "lunch" and call their evening meal "dinner". But others would stick to their typical usage regardless of the size of the meal. IIRC at my school it was "school dinners", "packed lunches", but both were eaten during a scheduled time called "lunch break".
Other schools would call it "dinner break". Same as sweeneyrod - dinner ladies or dinner people, if you want to be more progressive! We used to say dinner and tea, but I think my mum wanted to try and make herself sound more middle class so we changed to lunch and dinner.
I still call a meal at 5pm or so "teatime", because also being from a working class Manchester family, we didn't eat as late as we do now, so there was no need to differentiate tea vs evening dinner — Matt Fletcher. Show 4 more comments. Mitch Mitch The early risers would eat breakfast than join the later risers for brunch. Interesting statement about Sunday main meals However a similarly prepared Christmas Day meal eaten at the same time mid-afternoo would never be "Christmas Lunch".
This would be "Christmas Dinner". I must temper my observation with one caveat: we must not forget that culture, socioeconomic status, class-stratification and geography impact on how the debate is perceived in Britain. The Brits remain wedded to a perplexing lexicon of meal-time terminology. The byzantine nature of all this provides us with even more food for thought by Somerset Maugham's dictum: "To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day.
Up before dawn to milk the cow, while food was prepared so that "breakfast" came around dawn and was typically a solid, hot meal. Then into the fields to work until "lunch" a small meal usually sandwiches or cold leftovers was delivered in the late morning say or Back to work until mid afternoon or pm when they'd return to the house for a small hot meal called "dinner".
Milk the cows, chop wood, carry water, fix things, and other work near the house until "supper" , a large hot meal was served sometime after dark. An excellent schedule to emulate, without all that work in between. The day schedule heavily depends on the culture and profession you look at.
I grew up on a small farm in Austria. My parents - lifetime farmers - lived on a similar schedule. Depending on workload or time of year you can reach five times to eat breakfast before you start work; a small cold snack between breakfast and noon; the main meal at noon; sometimes a snack, often with coffee in the mid of afternoon; and finally something to eat after your days labour.
Also in German there are lots of names for all those meals. It strongly depends on your milieu. I adopted this eating schedule in college. Sometimes I also supplemented it with a midnight Taco Bell or Walmart run I have a really high metabolism.
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