Why do English people call 'Dinner', 'Tea?

[NeverendingR]

I've always called it dinner and I grew up in England, but I still dont understand why people call it Tea. I've asked friends who call it that, and they dont know either! haha

[Abdulmajid]

If you have dinner at noon ish, then it is tea in the evening.

If you have lunch at noon ish then you have tea in the evening.

You should never have lunch and dinner in the same day.

That was my upbringing anyway.

[whiffey]

Dinner is heads in the trough at about 1pm or 7pm, either is valid. Tea is a ghastly drink to get you going in the morning and should be illegal after 5pm.

[Jillius]

For me, dinner is at 12 noon and tea is about 5 o'clock. Supper is a snack just before bed ! Everyone where I live calls it the same !

[whiffey]

12 noon is far too early for dinner - in this instance it is lunch and on a Sunday, breakfast, and sorry to be perverse, but you can most certainly have dinner even after you have already had lunch. Tea is the ethnic minority in the woodpile. Too much Dorothy L Sayers.

[B00]

Breakfast
Dinner
Tea
Supper

That's the way it is, dunno why, it just is!

[Jillius]

Exactly Boo !

[tiggerblue10]

I call an evening meal dinner or supper. I don't think I have ever called it tea though.

[joggerjayne]

Only if we have it at "Tea Time" ... ie late afternoon, when traditionally, one would be having "High Tea" - literally, tea and snacks.

If we have it in the evening, it's called "Dinner" ... beacuse that's when people "dine".

If we eat later, it's called "Supper" ... because that's the time when the lords would have retired to "sup" their ale, or whatever.



The only exception to this is on Coronation Street, where they have "Dinner" at Lunch Time ...

... because it's set in a strange town somewhere up near Scotland.

[Abdulmajid]

can one have elevensise at anytime???

I dislike the word BRUNCH with a passion and SUPPER reminds me of village folk in some God-forsaken mining community.

However if you have fish for tea, I call it a fish supper.

[joggerjayne]

BOO, its ...

Breakfast

Brunch

Lunch

Tea

Dinner

Supper

!!!!!!!!!

[123everton]

Dinner is lunch and tea time is in the evening.
Although I've just had a bit of Plaice, have I just eaten a fish supper?
I'm all confused now, I'm going to go and sit in a darkened room.

[Jillius]

Since when has Manchester been near Scotland lol ???

[joggerjayne]

It's up that way, Jillius :-)

[poohshunny]

Does anyone elses kids take a packed "lunch" for their school "dinner"?!?!?!

[Lie-in King]

joggerjayne's list is spot-on...

[Abdulmajid]

And does anybody still have "afternoon tea" with a pot of tea and simple triangle slices of bread and butter or maybe a dainty cucumber sandwich??

Or did this die out with the Bronte Sisters?

[whiffey]

Does anyone else remember cockles and scampi for Sunday tea (about 5pm) and the cats going frantic at each crack of a scampi shell ?

[rescuer]

BOO is correct. Here in the North of England it has always been breakfast, dinner, tea and supper. Recently the 'experts' have said that a large meal at 'dinner-time' between noon and 1pm is better for people.
Fish and chip shops were always busy at 'dinner-time' and again at 'supper-time'.
Tea-time was a light meal around 5pm.
'Lunch' was for posh fowk!

[Gromit]

The mighty BOO is correct. Joggerjayne is correct for places near France.

[Quizmonster]

One cannot hope to explain the difference between lunch and dinner better than simply by quoting what The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) - the �bible' of word-meanings - says about 'dinner'...

"The chief meal of the day, eaten originally and still by the majority of people about the middle of the day, but now, by the professional and fashionable classes, usually in the evening."

They're called school 'dinners' for the very simple reason that the vast majority of pupils who attended state schools when such meals were first provided were (still are?) the children of working-class parents. And the working folk of Britain do, by and large, still speak of the midday meal as 'dinner'. Obviously, therefore, that usage would be carried over from home to school.
I'm fairly certain that the pupils at Eton, Harrow, Roedean etc do not call their midday meal 'dinner'! Why? Because they're not working-class!
By the same token, there are no doubt many people of working class background who use �dinner' to mean their evening meal. All that this means is that they are not part of the majority referred to by the OED above.
Re �tea', it says, "Now usually a light meal in the late afternoon but, locally in the UK, a cooked evening meal."
So, it is simply not a case of anyone's meal-list being right or wrong. It is clear that this whole thing is almost entirely a matter of perceived class and - to some extent - geography.