Apparently some Australian families refer to the midday meal as "dinner" instead of "lunch" which I only learned after hesitantly sitting down for "dinner" at 1pm.
this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2026
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I think they call it supper right? I believe this was an American South thing too
If they didn’t want to have tea, why the fuck were they making it at tea time?
Have I been confused this when time? If I get invited to have tea am I being invited to a meal? I thought it was like getting coffee.
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
I am also someone who grew up down south and we always had breakfast, lunch and tea \o/
Yeah, it’s actually more based around industrialisation than a north/south thing. I think the Cornish miners also came home for noon dinner as the main meal of the day and then had tea in the evening.
But when my Irish friend wants to smoke a cigarette, everybody loses their fucking mind.
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.
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.)
As a coffee drinker, if I was invited for some coffee and did not in fact get any coffee I'd be both a little confused and a little annoyed.
Yeah once a date invited me up for coffee and I was enjoying my time with her and thought another 15 minutes or so of conversation would be nice, but then it was suddenly like she forgot she invited me in or something because she just started getting ready for bed instead of making any coffee! I just politely said I needed to get going so she didn't feel embarrassed about forgetting she had invited me for coffee, though I think I failed because she did seem a bit upset.
So I tried to be considerate and go through a coffee shop drivethru after the next couple of dates. Even then, she offered coffee the first time and I pointed at my cup and said I'm fine, though that seemed to make her feel even more embarrassed as she looked like she was about to cry after that.
Then the next time she said, "I think we've been having a miscommunication when I've been inviting you up for coffee, I didn't really mean coffee, but I was being a bit immature and dancing around what I really wanted and then getting my feelings hurt when you didn't get the message. So I'll just say what I mean this time. Would you like to come up and have sex with me?"
I informed her that's where babies come from and she already knew and still wanted it. Then she was trying to say something about being on a pill and I noped out of there. I am not interested in a relationship where my partner likes to get high on pills and have babies. That just seems irresponsible to me.
Isn't "key" for a lock like, as old as modern English?
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.
My guess would be via Tom Scott
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nAsrsMPftOI&pp=ygUNVG9tIHNjb3R0IHRlYQ%3D%3D&ra=m
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.
There's also a tea break, which is usually just a cup (or mug if you are a ruffian) of tea.
Then there's high tea
What time do you usually have these?
Not to be confused with tea time, where you might reasonably expect to eat your dinner.
Are we talking South dinner or North dinner? .
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?
I've always called it Sunday lunch, but do use a mush of dinner and tea. Dinner is just the biggest meal of the day, and may or may not be at tea time.
Oh yeah, that's definitely a thing too!
I hope that clears things up.
Not really. You had me in the first half, tho.
Right? I'm clearly far too American to understand. I'm more confused than I was before.
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.
Ok, go edit the wikipedia article then if you're so sure of yourself.
Errr... That's not what I'm saying chief. I'm saying you are right, just that things have changed in usage.
The wiki article actually says that too.
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.
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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
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I guess the argument could be made that chicken soup is a tea
British people:
i did not expect british diogenes
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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