Lunch, Dinner, Supper, or Tea?

BY KIM HUGHES –

A few days ago, a friend and I were discussing the terms used for meals eaten around noon and later in the evening.  That being an interesting southern topic, I decided to do a little research and see what I could find.

It seems it depends where you grew up and what term the locals used.  The expressions do relate to the time of day that you eat the meal and the type of food and the size of the meal.  That’s why it can get confusing.

First of all is breakfast.  This is the simplest; it’s the first meal of the day in the morning, meaning “break the fast” of your overnight sleep.  In the middle of the day, you might have lunch or dinner.  Lunch sounds more informal or more typical, particularly for people who are working.

In the evening, you might have dinner or supper.  People who have a quick lunch in the middle of the day will say they have dinner in the evening.  A supper is usually a light meal and is probably after a larger dinner has been had in the middle of the day.

Confused?  Well most people see a dinner as a more complete meal.  Lunch and supper are both light kinds of meal.  Dinner is the main meal of the day, served either in the evening or at midday.    So whether you use lunch/dinner or dinner/supper is heavily determined by when your culture traditionally has its largest meal.

It’s quite common to hear dinner as the noontime meal and supper as the evening meal in many areas of the American south, regardless of which meal is larger.  (My friend would agree with this!)

Two more words you could add to your list are brunch and tea.  Brunch is a mixture of breakfast and lunch, and people usually have brunch as a replacement for both lunch and breakfast.  Brunch is usually had at about 11:00 am.

And the final word is tea.  Now of course this is a drink, like tea and coffee, but it can also be a light evening meal.  High tea is often a misnomer; in Britain it tends to be on the heavier side.  In America, we often offer tea with fancy pastries and cakes for high tea.

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Jeri Pearson

Jeri is the News Director for Pulse Multi-Media and Editor of The Polk County Pulse. She has 10 years of experience in community focused journalism and has won multiple press association awards.

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