Dinner or tea?

I was brought up in the North of England - still live there. Dinner was the midday meal; the evening meal was high tea - a pie or a casserole, veg and sometime a pudding - usually served to coincide with folks getting in from work. It would be their main meal of the day. This routine was varied only on Sunday when dinner was a midday roast, and tea was a lighter repast - salad with ham or tinned salmon, tinned fruit and cream for afters or a cake. Now, a midday meal for me is lunch, but a hot meal in the evening is still high tea.

I'm south of london now, & was only south midlands as a child - think there's class as well as region in meal-nomenclature. If I ask people tound to tea at 7 pm, they seem to know what they're in for.(main meal).

Breakfast. Lunch. And supper here. Supper is at 6.30 to 7.00 and is a meat and veg type meal. Still supper wherever we eat it. Only Sunday has a dinner at lunch time if its a roast type meal. And I am certainly at the other end of the scale from uppeŕ class and didnt go to boarding school. But would have loved Malory Towers.
Eating "tea" at 6.30 to 7 is so wrong. Unless it is a sandwich and cake and pot of tea.
It is all very confusing. My daughter in NWales eats "tea" in the evening. And I brought her up!

Lunch and dinner.

It was tea if it wasn't a meat and two veg type dinner, and lunch was snack.
The snack is probably peculiar to my family, though.

Supper ,I could cope with for the evening meal Helter Skelter - I just feel so pretentious calling it "dinner" although if it comes naturally to you, it isn't, but I can't say it naturally.It is confusing!

Supper would be a late, extra little snack for me.

As a child in Scotland I had dinner and then tea but if we were dining out, usually around 4-5pm it was a high tea.

Now I sometimes have a snack at lunchtime but always supper.
I used to have dinner but being on my own now, it is supper.

Anything after 9.00 pm would be a "little something to eat". Nameless.

Like many, when I was a child it was dinner - two courses- around midday, tea after school, sandwiches or a bit of salad or maybe a poached egg on toast and as a teenager, supper was a hot drink and a biscuit before bedtime.
It is all so confusing nowadays that, apart from lunch in the middle of the day, I avoid using a word for the evening meal eg What shall we eat tonight?
Dinner is too formal, supper too posh / or too insubstantial, depending on your upbringing.
I talk about going out for a meal, or eating out, and if I were to invite people home I would nowadays be very clear about what I was offering. I have been caught out by being invited and only given cakes and a drink when I was expecting a meal, and having guests who had already eaten a cooked meal!

Manchester born:
Breakfast, dinner, tea. Supper as a rare treat was a bag of chips on the way home from my nana’s house, or (Saturday nights only) bread dipped in the hot fat from the next day’s Sunday roast or a cup of Oxo.

Subsequent homes outside of Manchester:
Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Occasional suppers of cheese and biscuits.

I really liked school dinners. Usually meat, cabbage, lumpy mash and thick gravy, followed by tapioca if unlucky but sponge with pink custard if lucky.
And some days we had spam fritters!
Spam was my absolute favourite.

Londoner. Dinner, a hot meal. in the middle of the day (either at home or school, depending on my dad’s shifts - we stayed at school if he was on nights) and tea, which I swear was jam sandwiches every night bar Sunday, at about 6pm

Now I’m all middle class, and have lunch in the early afternoon and dinner about 8pm. I am considering switching back to main meals during the day at least a few days a week though, and then I won’t know which way is up!

Siope

Londoner. Dinner, a hot meal. in the middle of the day (either at home or school, depending on my dad’s shifts - we stayed at school if he was on nights) and tea, which I swear was jam sandwiches every night bar Sunday, at about 6pm

Now I’m all middle class, and have lunch in the early afternoon and dinner about 8pm. I am considering switching back to main meals during the day at least a few days a week though, and then I won’t know which way is up!

We sometimes had jam sandwiches for tea, or jam butties as we called them in my neck of the woods.

Midday meal is lunch. Evening meal is supper unless going out or having guests, when it’s dinner. Tea was bread and jam and homemade cakes after school. Never any kind of bedtime snack.
It does seem that we used to eat a lot more than now though I suppose helpings were smaller and everyone was more active.

Midday meal was lunch, whether it was the main meal of the day or a light meal like soup and a roll. The name of the evening meal depended on what the meal consisted of. It was tea,when the food served was bread and spread and a slice of cake. If for some reason the main meal of the day was in the evening, then it was dinner.

In my parents house "dinner" was the meal you had in the middle of the day and "tea" was something you had around 6 oclock.

My grandmother called the mid day meal "lunch" and the evening meal "dinner". Tea was something you had around 4 oclock with cream cakes and dainty sandwiches.

My evening meal is called "supper" regardless of what time It takes place.

Irs dinner and tea where I live in NW

grannyactivist - I love a cheese and biscuits supper!

Growing up it was always dinner at lunchtime and tea after school.
Now I have lunch in the middle of the day and dinner at 6 ish.

We had breakfast dinner and tea we had school dinners or soup beans or egg at home. Our tea was what our mum called pot luck whatever she could make with every type of offal. Our dad grew fruit and vegetables especially in the summer he was brilliant at growing tomatoes. We spent the summer months foraging fruit our mum and dad spent Saturdays making pies and crumbles I still do that now.
Although most of the 1960s was pretty miserable on Merseyside especially if your dad worked in a factory they were always on strike. Sunday breakfast the choice was bacon or salt fish if you got up early enough or you missed out so it was just cereal. Sunday dinner was about 2pm and tea was at 5pm we never had supper but our mum did her best and we appreciated it.

Babs03

When I was growing up in a small mill town in Lancashire we called lunch ‘dinner’ and we called dinner ‘tea’. We didn’t have supper and can’t remember anyone using the word supper at all.
What did you call it?

Like you my upbringing was in a Lancashire town too (Bolton) and like you dinner was your midday meal and tea was your evening meal. Seems odd now looking back but it’s what we were brought up with. One thing I can’t shake off from my Lancashire upbringing is the name of that gap between houses, although down here in Sussex they call it a Twitten to me it was and will always be a Ginnel!!

Mainly used ' tea' for what is now the evening meal , when growing up in the 1960s/70s, but lunch started used for midday meal after my dad stopped coming home at lunchtime when the dinner break was shortened from an hour and a quarter to an hour. Whenever we said what's for tea or what's for dinner my mother assume we meant the evening meal. We never had supper, as that was a meal the Posh folks had after 7 pm. I don't eat supper, and I don't really like being invited for 'supper,' , as I am uncertain if it's a late full meal or a bedtime snack .I now get I digestion if I eat after 7.30 p.m

Greetings from a fellow Boltonian.I would say Ginnel.Had to put a capital G otherwise it wouldn’t recognise it!
Barbara
I grew up in Smithills area..How about you.

I’ve always known lunch to be a midday meal and dinner is around 6ish but if the dinner is a light meal then it’s called tea.