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Why is this usage of tea so confusing for everybody? We re-use words all the time in English. It’s a very simple concept. Imagine if a musician asked about the key of a song and everybody was like “KEY? LIKE A CAR KEY? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? SONGS DONT HAVE KEYS! IVE NEVER BEEN SO CONFUSED IN MY LIFE”
Up north we say “tea” for evening meal. That’s it. Explanation sorted.
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.
Ok it was a deliberately silly example for emphasis. Here’s a real example. I went to Australia once and in the airport somebody referred to my Mentos as “lolly”. To me, lollies are on a stick. Apparently not to aussies. It threw me off for half a second, but that’s it. Confused is an overstatement.
Yeah but the context clues are a hell of a lot easier there. You’re holding an object, and if someone called it a chupa-chupa or a sucker most people would be able to put that together pretty easily
Now imagine you’re going through stretches and someone walks in and is like “oh, playing football are you”. You could be preparing to go outside and play football… But you’re just stretching
I think most people would be confused by that unexpected second meaning of a familiar word
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
Breakfast, lunch, dinner
Dinner is at midday, what are you playing at having 2 meals at midday and no evening meal? Get back to France
Isn’t “key” for a lock like, as old as modern English?
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.
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.)
Well, according to British Standard 6008 (ISO 3103), the preparation of a liquor of tea requires a tea leaf.
I don’t know why I have that knowledge in my back pocket, nor the urge to share that information, but there you go.
Explanation if any of our foreign cousins want it.
Tea, short for tea time.
In the South you used to (and still do) have the following three meals a day:
Breakfast, lunch, dinner.
In the North, however…
Breakfast, dinner, tea.
Both might tie the end of the day off with supper too. Brunch is for the jobless middle class and wandered into the conversation with yuppies in the 80s.
There’s also a tea break, which is usually just a cup (or mug if you are a ruffian) of tea. Not to be confused with tea time, where you might reasonably expect to eat your dinner.
Then there’s high tea, which yes, features tea. Often a pot and almost never a mug. It frequently comes with anemic sandwiches and perhaps a scone.
I hope that clears things up.
In my house we use the Southern words during the week and the Northern version on Sundays, as in Sunday Dinner. Are we weird or does anyone else do that?
Oh yeah, that’s definitely a thing too!
Then there’s high tea, which yes, features tea. Often a pot and almost never a mug. It frequently comes with anemic sandwiches and perhaps a scone.
High tea is/was the working class term for an evening meal as it was had at the table, and it would usually include cooked meat.
Afternoon tea is the posh one in the afternoon with the cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off.
What you’ve done there is confuse what I was describing as usage with historical context.
What you just said is like saying, “actually Gay really means just happy”.
I mean, yes, it did, but now not so much.
And that’s the difference between descriptive and prescriptive usage.
David Foster Wallace talks about it a fair bit in one of his essays. Prescriptive description of English usage being somewhat colonial and, to an extent, authoritarian as well as being particularly useless on the ground, so to speak.
So yeah, it was that way around, but try using it that way round now and see how far you get.
Interestingly, in Canada “high tea” is a fancy afternoon tea with little sandwiches and desserts. Often something you can book at posh hotels like Fairmonts.
I’ve seen places here mix them up too, it’s not uncommon.
If you want to be a pedant or just find this sort of thing amusing, you could send the hotel restaurant a link to the wikipedia page.
Ah Britain, sailing the high teas
In the South you used to (and still do) have the following three meals a day:
Breakfast, lunch, dinner.
In the North, however…
Breakfast, dinner, tea.
In the South, we sometimes have “breakfast, dinner, supper” (especially in rural areas; city folks are more likely to have “breakfast, lunch, dinner”) and our tea definitely has ice and a fuckton of sugar in it.
Are we both talking about the UK here?
Ice and sugar in tea feels distinctly not British at all.
Bless your heart. 😉
I hope that clears things up.
Not really. You had me in the first half, tho.
Dinner, as the main meal, used to be closer to midday in agrarian times, with the evening meal being a light supper. Only the industrial revolution, with workers spending most of the working day in the workplace, changed this.
Yep, and that industrial revolution is responsible for the N/S split in terms too, the factories of the north and all that.
Where my family’s from, that naming convention is still used.
Breakfast - first meal of the day
Dinner - midday meal
Supper - evening meal
Lunch - a small snack with no specific time
Interestingly most Psych units I’ve worked (US) serve (roughly timed):
0800 - breakfast
- along with a lightly caffeinated coffee or tea, the only caffeine routinely served
1200 - lunch
1700 - dinner
2000 - snack
- usually prepackaged chips and crackers, sometimes cookies or ice cream. The long stay hospital gave the patients 25¢ for every group they attended and they could order nicer stuff from the staff member who made the weekly Walmart trip.
I somehow feel more informed and more confused at the same time.
What about second breakfast?
10 o’clock tea and elevenses could both reasonably fit the bill here I feel.
You can also have “breakfast, lunch and tea”, or breakfast, dinner and dinner".
I’m sure. Although I’ve never met anyone who uses breakfast dinner dinner.
Like, seriously, I can’t imagine living like that.
The thing is, you might not know! A work colleague who calls their 12:30pm break their “dinner break”, might separately go home and ask their partner “what should we have for dinner?”.
I guess the argument could be made that chicken soup is a tea
i did not expect british diogenes
British people:
There also was a contemporary nuncheon “light mid-day meal,” from noon + Middle English schench “drink.”
https://www.etymonline.com/word/lunch
It’s fucking beverage all the way down in English.
Bonus:
BRIBE. Lunch’d O dear! Permit me, my dear Mrs. Prattle, to refresh my sponge, upon the honey dew that clings to your ravishing pouters. O! Mrs. Prattle, this shall be my lunch.
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Haha, wow! People in different cultures have different words for different things!
yes and we’re celebrating that here. it’s very human and expands people’s horizons.
It was a subtle hint to request tea be made by the person already using the oven/stove.
We also say “tea” when referring to gossip.
