Supper or Tea or Dinner?

We usually eat around 6.30, when we have what I call supper, but which Mr P will call tea. (As in "what shall we have for tea tonight?)

I suspect that this is to wind me up, like when he says he's going into the lounge to sit on the settee, when he knows full well it's the sitting room and the sofa!

Bluebelle, I've not heard the expression 'gravy dinner' for years. Thank you.

callgirl I would rather do without a settee than not have a table and chair. I am at my most comfortable when sitting up at a table. eating or not.

Lunch is around midday and dinner is in the evening after 6.00pm . It very much depends what part of the country you come from though. As. Southerner living I in the East Midlands I call it dinner my partner calls it tea.

Midday is lunchtime....dinner between 5-6 in evening. But Sunday is different Dinner is always 1.30 in our house.

All you folk who wouldn`t dream of eating anywhere but at the table would be horrified if they came here, we don`t have a table, no room for one, so we always eat on our knees, using a tray.

Years ago when the AC were young, we used to often stay at a particular seaside hotel where high tea was served around 5 - 6.30 pm in the brasserie, mainly as an early meal for children who could then be got ready for bed and the grown-ups could have time to change and prepare themselves for dinner from 8 - 10pm served in the more formal dining room with candles and flowers on the tables and a grand piano with (obvs) a pianist.
High tea was usually various omelettes, ham egg and chips, baked potatoes with a choice of fillings, fish pie etc with assorted sides and salads plus puddings.
Wonderful memories. Staff used to check on the children whilst we dined.
Bowls of fresh fruit and newspapers delivered to our rooms daily.
The children used to have a continental breakfast in bed then a full English in the dining-room.
The housekeeping looked after us superbly.

Lunch at lunchtime i.e. 12 -2
Supper in the evening
Dinner if it's more formal.

Canadian Gran I know what you mean about European families and keeping children up late for supper.
In the hotter countries they have siesta in the afternoon along with something to eat. Then the whole family hit the town in the evening. I've seen children asleep under the table at midnight, that's when they're not roaring around making a nuisance of themselves!

What has one's background got to do with what you call your meals and when you eat them?

Over 70+ years I seem to have used almost every word going for the day's meals and every time going. Even as a child times and vocabulary were mutable

Not sure it is a class thing, I'm ordinary, grew up on a council estate and always had breakfast, lunch and dinner, with an unnamed snack mid evening if wanted. Nowadays I rarely eat breakfast so have lunch and dinner. If lunch is the main meal, then dinner is skipped in favour of a light snack that doesn't get a name. Lunch is 12-2, dinner any time after 6. Canadian relatives always refer to supper and are not being pretentious, just their normal.

I'm with 00mam00 on the supper front. It's quite common round our part of the Marches to be invited to supper or even kitchen supper which is just what you imagine - Emma Bridgwater round the Aga and a tasty 2 course meal that we call dinner at our house as we don't have EB or an Aga! Midday meal chez nous is lunch although DH still refers to it as dinner after 38 years of me calling it lunch. Some habits never change!

Breakfast lunch or dinner at midday or thereabouts. Tea at 5–6pm. I always say I’m going out for a meal rather than a specific name

It's changed a bit for me. When I was a little girl, we had breakfast, dinner, tea and supper.
This tended to be because of Dads work in the pit (colliery). When he came off shift, he would have dinner around 2.30, whereas we children had our dinner at school, and we all had tea around 5 pm. If his shift was nights, dinner tended to be around 4.30 - 5 pm. Our supper (children) was something really light, e.g. a glass of milk and a biscuit.
On Saturday & Sunday, dinner was always around 2 pm, tea around 5 pm.
Nowadays, I have breakfast, lunch, dinner and no supper unless you count a cup of tea as supper!

I always say breakfast, lunch, dinner. Tea is something I drink.

Dinner around 7pm when DH gets home.

I have been brought up in the south and it has always been :Breakfast (early morning) Lunch (around midday) and Tea (around 5-6pm) and the only time you might have supper would be if you had somehow missed out on Tea......

simples Cherrytree

The difference between dinner and supper, when you are talking of an evening meal, is that Dinner is a grand meal eaten in the dining room with the best china while supper is the evening meal that you eat in the kitchen, which is where most people eat these days.

Do not know anything about class distinctions, I am not a snob in either direction, but over my life time, the midday meal has been variously lunch or dinner and the evening meal has been variously dinner, supper, or tea, depending on what was being eaten, where it was being eaten, who it was being eaten with and what time it was being eaten.

As long as we have enough food it doesn't really mtter! My dear mum was a bit of a snob though and so she was always reminding us what was U or non U ha ha

I think this 'High tea /afternoon tea' confusion is widespread maxdecatt. I often hear people refer to high tea when they obviously mean afternoon tea. I was quite sad to recently learn the The Savoy has changed their naming of afternoon tea to high tea to attract American tourists who might not understand the correct terminology.

Lunch 12.30ish dinner about 5.50-6

We have lunch middle of the day. If we've had a cooked meal for lunch (eating out, Sunday roast etc) we have tea late afternoon. If we have sandwiches etc for lunch then tea becomes dinner later. So ours depends on what we eat ?

4pm to 5pm-ish is time for tea and around 8pm-9pm is supper.

No dinner in this abode. Breakfast, lunch and tea was all. Nowadays, however, it's called 'whenever snack'!

I recently had some American visitors. They were looking forward to High Tea at Fortnums in London. They thought that High Tea was an upper class thing and was something they needed to experience. They were mystified when I told them that High Tea was quite the opposite. The upper classes have Afternoon Tea with cakes and dainty sandwiches, whereas we of the lower orders have High Tea, a full meal, usually including a hot dish. Getting Americans to understand the class differences was quite difficult. They still went ahead and visited Fortnums but then talked about it as Afternoon Tea....it cost them about £100 per couple!