Dinner or tea?

Irs dinner and tea where I live in NW

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

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

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!

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.

Lunch and dinner.

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!

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).

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.

Breakfast, lunch and supper at 7 on the kitchen table, dinner if it’s in the dining room with guests and it’s usually later.

When growing up we ate breakfast, dinner, tea and supper with dinner our main meal.
Now we still have our dinner at about 12:30, and our supper at about 7pm. Supper is usually a sandwich, or cheese on toast.

Regional differences. apply with this. I'm in the South East. Now lunch is middle of the day, can be light, soup or a sandwich or a full meal, as in having 'lunch out' restaurant meal. Or it could be brunch, late breakfast early lunch which would suffice till dinnet. Tea would be the middle of the afternoon, cup of tea, slice of cake, more occasional. Or children's meal after school that would be tea if they eat later, after 6 then it's dinner. We usually eat the main meal, dinner in the evening around 7ish. Roasts on Sunday with the family are called lunch even though we eat those around 4ish.

Back in my childhood it went like this. On school days the dreaded school dinners were served at lunchtime. Tea a meal between 4 and 5 at home. Sunday roasts middle of the day those were called dinner, tea lighter meal around 5ish, but if we had an evening meal at home later it would be dinner. Something cooked at tea time on Saturdays, not as heavy as a dinner, but more than tea, treat type of food which for me were chipolatas and grilled tomatoes and something nice afterwards whilst watching "Thank Your Lucky Stars" that would be supper.

I'm from the North too.

On a school day:
I had school "dinners" and took in my "dinner money", then had "tea" (a meal) with my grandmother or "tea" (snack) on getting home from school - before eating with parents at about 7pm. The evening meal was called "dinner" by my parents.

At the weekend and holidays my mid-day meal was called lunch.
Depending on the time the evening meal was eaten it was "tea" or "dinner"

Supper was only a (rare) snack before bed.

I had friends who went to boarding school and their evening meal was "supper".

😂

Brought up in the south, lunch was middle of the day and dinner in the early evening.
We were once invited to supper which I thought rather odd because to us it was a very light snack we had just before bedtime. We did eventually, rather late in the day, twig that it was dinner but were rather late!

We never had supper! It was tea and early bed. I loved sleeping at my cousins house because my auntie gave us supper - a drink of milk and a biscuit. Supper was unheard of in our house!

I was brought up in Yorkshire, we had breakfast, dinner and tea. Although these days I seem to refer to
breakfast , lunch and tea?