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.
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