My mrs grew up on the Isle of Wight and says this is shite - they always had dinner. The chart should pretty much show historically industrial versus mercantile areas though - i.e. did you have the big meal of the day in the middle of or after work.
Breakfast
Elevenses
Brunch
Lunch
Afternoon tea
Dinner
Supper
Midnight feast
Alright, calm down Frodo
But what about second breakfast?
Elevenses is GOAT.
What meal is this? The middle of the day? Or the one after work/school? Because I feel it’s incorrect for the east/west split in the south.
Location: new forest/hants.
I'm in Manchester and your interpretation is 100% correct. Although... I did grow up in Hythe.
I guess highlanders just starve?
They eat as and when they catch something, with their bare teeth.
Who wants to live forever?
There can be only one, and he doesn't call it anything.
It's a kind of magic
They asked multiple people but couldn't understand a word they were saying
No wonder Orkney and Shetland have left altogether. Maybe they moved back in with Norway
As a sometimes highlander: dinner far more common, but tea is the same thing
In Northern Scotland, they just don't eat.
I'm so far north i'm not even on the map. We mostly eat fish and wind for our 'tea'.
I'm from the North but I tend to use dinner for the evening meal, rather than tea. Dinner in my mind is the "big" meal of the day.
In industrial towns you’d have dinner at lunchtime and a smaller tea after, but obviously everybody with office jobs now is getting back after six and eating when they gather the energy to do so.
Yes. These all have different meanings to me.
Supper is a meal typically served in the evening, it’s the last meal of the day, but it’s informal.
Dinner is more formal, an afternoon meal with social elements and/or formality. It can be the last meal but doesn’t have to be.
Tea is an afternoon snack, typically served with tea, hence the name. Tea might be skipped if you have an early dinner.
In primary school in the 90s, we'd call lunch dinner (dinner time, dinner money, school dinners) but if you brought your own food it was packed lunch. But at home, we'd say dinner for the evening meal.
They still do that at my kid's school, so he gets two dinners a day. Chaos reigns.
I was so confused when I first heard someone ask "what's for tea?". Uhm, tea I guess, maybe a biscuit??
Tea is a delicious hot drink, I have a little milk in mine. Breakfast is the first meal of the day after getting up. Lunch is a midday meal. Afternoon tea is a posh cup of tea, with a pot, and some snacks like scones, cakes and finger sandwiches. Dinner is an evening main meal Supper is a late evening snack.
I'm from the north west.
I’m from the middle of the midlands. This is absolutely correct.
"Dinner," tea is daft, twee and confusing. I'm from + Live in Tea heartlands though
Tea. Dinner only used for Sundays or Christmas.
Dinner is the main meal. Lunch/tea is a smaller meal.
Lunch is the main meal. Breakfast is a rushed coffee at best. Dinner is an unenthusiastic munch that takes place anytime between 4-11pm
I grew up saying 'Tea' for the evening meal but changed to 'Dinner' at university - just to fit in.
When talking with my parents though, I still say Tea.
It very much does come down I think to what was historically the main meal of the day - which makes this both a regional divide, and a class divide.
I've lived in all these regions, I just say food now. Safer that way
Followed by "psspsspsspss" to anyone within earshot
IIRC this is a class divide indicator. The fact that class maps well onto geography is just correlation.
Middle class has breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Working class has breakfast, dinner, and tea.
Supper is an outlier and definitely more unusual. In my experience it usually indicates a smaller evening meal.
Annoyingly, lunch is dinner (dinner ladies at school) but also the evening meal is dinner if I haven’t had dinner (lunch) 😂 then it’s tea time.
Breakfast Dinner Tea Supper (optional)
My test is what you called the school staff who served your midday meal. Was it a "dinner lady" or "lunch lady"?!
The school thing is a good point. We called hot meals at school dinners, that were served by dinner ladies.
But we also had packed lunches that we ate out of lunchboxes.
Damn you and your logic!!
Do you call it Christmas Dinner or Christmas Lunch?
Dinner = posh Tea = pov Supper = aristocracy
Having moved from a tea-saying region of England to Northern Ireland, I haven't heard anyone say "tea" around here for an evening meal
Dinner is around 2pm and the biggest meal of the day. Supper is around 7 pm.
Dinner if it's hot, lunch/tea if it's cold, supper if you're in an Enid Blyton story.
This country is obviously in decline, cold tea
They tried to teach me English in school ~30 years ago. At that moment it was "dinner" for the meal near the midday and "supper" for the evening meal. Breakfast for morning.
Sounded quite logical and convenient.
A casual place for banter and anything that doesn't fit in anywhere else.
Have chat and a natter. Talk about anything and everything that's not political!
Keep it casual.
Here:
Elsewhere:
