Breakfast

Elevenses

Brunch

Lunch

Afternoon tea

Dinner

Supper

Midnight feast

I guess highlanders just starve?

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.

• Lunch in the middle of the day
• Tea after school - when you’re a kid
• Dinner after work - as a grownup
• Supper is optional and before bed. (Bad for you)

Location: new forest/hants.

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.

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 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.

Tea. Dinner only used for Sundays or Christmas.

Dinner is the main meal. Lunch/tea is a smaller meal.

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"?!

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.

I've lived in all these regions, I just say food now. Safer that way

Dinner = posh Tea = pov Supper = aristocracy

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.

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.

Dinner is around 2pm and the biggest meal of the day. Supper is around 7 pm.

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.

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.

I live in the south west and it’s dinner for tea.