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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?”.
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!
Wrong way round.
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
Not really. You had me in the first half, tho.
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. 😉
Is it?
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
1200 - lunch
1700 - dinner
2000 - snack
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?”.