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’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.
“Dinner,” tea is daft, twee and confusing. I’m from + Live in Tea heartlands though
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.
- 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.
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
Fuck this shite xenophobic bigoted patter
Ironically at least some of the Highland accents are often cited as the clearest English and the easiest to understand for non-native speakers.
I went to Madagascar 20 years ago. I turned on the radio in my cabin and it was tuned to BBC World Service. It was a bit of a trip hearing another tuechter’s voice in the south Malagasy desert.
Sorry what mate? One more time for me didn’t quite get it.
Piss took too close to the sun 😭
As a sometimes highlander: dinner far more common, but tea is the same thing
No wonder Orkney and Shetland have left altogether. Maybe they moved back in with Norway
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’.
We just can’t afford the added transport costs they plop on everything. Everyone knows 300 miles is such a ridiculously long and insurmountable distance.
Not sure about that. I know a couple of Scottish guys who walked 1000 miles. Alright, it took them 2 stints but if they did that, then 300 shouldn’t be impossible at all, particularly not with a car.
So they walked 500 miles and then they walked 500 more?
Were they the ones who fell down at your door?
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.
Tea. Dinner only used for Sundays or Christmas.
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.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/supper
Formerly, the last of the three meals of the day (breakfast, dinner, and supper); now applied to the last substantial meal of the day when dinner is taken in the middle of the day, or to a late meal following an early evening dinner. Supper is usually a less formal meal than late dinner.
My guess would be food after a late work shift, so probably working class
if you call dinner the main meal of the day, the earlier you start work, the earlier you’ll have it
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
