British people:

I guess the argument could be made that chicken soup is a tea

And there's tea time, which is dinner, and also tee time, which is a golfing thing.

And there's also the long dark tea time of the soul, which is a book by Douglas Adams

Terrible example and it's just demonstrating that you can't put yourself in someone else's shoes for even a moment.

You understand that usage of tea because you used it your entire life, someone who hasn't would rightfully be confused.

But when my Irish friend wants to smoke a cigarette, everybody loses their fucking mind.

It still confuses me that I can have a cup of coffee with somebody without actually drinking coffee. (In English and my mother tongue as well.)

bruh because it's confusing that a meal is named after a beverage, it's not the double naming that's confusing

Yeah, but as someone who grew up down south and has lived in the north for the majority of my life:

Breakfast, lunch, dinner

Very clear, no fucker doesn't know what you're talking about

Breakfast, dinner, tea

What the fuck are you playing at, skipping lunch and having a drink to compensate?

Get in the sea

Tea is important enough in this country to not use the word again, especially not for the second most important thing: dinner

It's ok how much you like tea. I'm sorry they hurt you about it. Tea is super neat and fun and good. You are super neat and fun and good.

Offer of a hot beverage:

• Would you like a tea?
• How about a tea?
• (Shouting from kitchen) - Tea?

Even less ambiguous if cuppa/brew etc. is used Typically only offered in the morning or afternoon if you have just 'popped round'.

Offer of dinner:

• Would you like to stay for tea?
• Come round mine for tea
• Have you had tea yet?
• Oh you should stay for tea

Typically if you you weren't intending on staying or are being explicitly invited over.

Don't see how any of this could be confusing at all to people not born into it with innate understanding 😅

yes and we're celebrating that here. it's very human and expands people's horizons.

Very common in the UK too. Lunch is dinner, dinner is dinner, dinner is tea, tea is also a specific type of afternoon meal (scones and sandwiches).
Even then, people will just say something like 'morning tea' instead of breakfast.
It's a linguistic war zone.

What the fuck.
Have never heard anyone call lunch anything other than that, unless it is a tradie who might say 'smoko' for lunch or a 15 minute snack break.

Aussie terms for meals:
Breakfast/brekkie
Morning tea/smoko*
Lunch (or brunch if its ~9-11am)
Afternoon tea/arvo tea*
Dinner/Tea
Dessert/Sweets*

*morning/arvo tea are primarily for social sit downs and would be like biscuits/scones and a cup of tea/coffee (having a cuppa with friends/family, small meetings with clients, retirees with nothing better to do)

• dessert/sweets is if your having something after dinner, like some pie/crumble with ice cream, pancakes, etc)

Also 'entree' is a small course before the main meal in dinner, the USA confused the fuck out of me when i visited.

Back in the day, the noon/midday meal was called dinner also in the US. Particularly in rural areas. And for some of us boomers it's still dinner. Growing up on a farm, Breakfast was 6am-ish thing after chores were done, (you could sneak in some jelly toast before chores if you weren't to lazy to get up early enough), the noon dinner, and you always came home to eat it, was a full meal deal because you had spent your morning often doing heavy manual labor. Plus your afternoon was going to be no different. You got lunch a 4pm because supper was a 7pm-ish meal, (often heavy on the "ish" part depending on what went wrong during the afternoon).

We evidently didn't get the memo about changing dinner to lunch until much, much later. Besides, we would have needed to rename "lunch" to something else for the 4pm break. I still call the noon meal dinner to this day. You can call it whatever you like, because I don't sweat those details.

Careful with that kind of thinking! If you don't watch out, you risk entering Salad Theory territory 😬