Nevertheless offering a cup of tea is a gesture loaded with kindness and inclusiveness. The Japanese raise this to an exquisite level with the tea ceremony, but England and its colonial outposts use this simple politeness to cross barriers and create warmth. It isn’t easy to express but it is real.
Here’s a good example of that:
I go to my doctor’s (GP) surgery and have never thought of it otherwise.
However your point about surgeons made me smile. A few years ago there was an effort to set up a local Medico/Legal society, a convivial creature which exists in a few other cities.
We (the lawyers) thought this meant doctors in general - GPs plus specialist surgeons. Unfortunately the surgeons were totally non-plussed - why would mere GPs be invited to join?
The venture died still-born. 
Well done.
The offering of a cup of tea reduces the situation and takes the energy out of the agonists. There is no way they can flame hotly when confronted with a cup of tea.
Fortunately there is no right to bear arms/submachine guns in this situation. Deep breaths, as salaam and handshakes all around.
In Scotland, ‘tea time’ is generally the evening meal. But also used if it’s time for the morning or afternoon break and a cup of tea is involved.
Dinner is lunch hence the term ‘school dinners’ and school ‘dinner time’. ‘Afternoon tea’ would either mean the afternoon casual cup of tea or the ‘posh’ tea room experience with cakes and sandwiches. Depends on the context.
When my mother was a teen in 60s Glasgow, she’d trek a few miles home for lunch which would be the main meal of the day- meat and two veg plus soup or pudding/desert. The evening meal ‘tea’ with be something light like a sandwich. Both involved drinking tea 
But I use ‘lunch’ personally- having spent years ‘down south’ in England. And ‘dinner’ for the evening meal. We have tea at about 5pm. Killed me the first term at uni when I discovered that 6pm seems to be the earliest my friends would eat!
…and just think what might have happened if everyone had sat down for a chat over a nice cuppa and a McVitie’s Digestive biscuit, rather than dumping all that lovely tea into Boston Harbour.
With a tub of M&S chocolate mini bites that whole fling with self-determination might have been a historical footnote of the continued British Empire…
You’ve clearly never spent time with me any my friends.
Mancunian Karl Pilkington also refers to “have something in for tea” when he’s talking about stopping at the supermarket to pick something up for that evening’s dinner.
Apropos of nothing really, but I first saw these “Breakfast Lunch Dinner Supper” plates(image from a Norse webpage, of course) on Ashen’s*, so clearly there is enough of this established four-meal culture to allow commerical exploitation.
I wonder if Taco Bell could exploit this for their FourthMeal campaign (Taco Bell has franchises in the UK- do they have a Fifth Meal campaign there?)
*you get your British culture from proper TV programs, I’ll get mine from wacked out dodgy YouTube channels and old Britcoms - hmm, is Top Gear a proper TV program - well, it is a program…
Meal-name terminology is confusing even within the US. “Breakfast” is the morning meal; everyone agrees on that (unless it’s combined with lunch into brunch). “Lunch” is always the midday meal, and “supper” is always the evening meal. “Dinner” is whichever meal is the largest or most important of the day, and usually displaces the other term. For most Americans, the largest meal is usually the evening one, and so we speak of “breakfast, lunch, dinner”. In some parts of the country, though (especially rural areas), the largest meal is usually the midday one, and so in those places one speaks of “breakfast, dinner, supper”. The British “tea”, then, would be more equivalent to “supper” than to “dinner”.
Judging by the link you’ve provided, Taco Bell has a grand total of three outlets in the UK, so it’ll be a pretty small campaign!
You mean “programme”, surely
Now let’s talk about meat tea. What, tea made out of meat?:smack:
What’s meat tea?
Bovril?
Strewth!* :smack:
*OK, that word (with the meaning of dismay, not surprize) I first heard from the rather cool and amusing “British Leyland - the Quality Connection” short, which in true British Nationalized Car Industry fashion begins (and ends) with a horrific fatal car accident… :eek:. I’ve seen it pop up in lots of other places recently too.
Infrequently in the U.S., punter is used to mean “a dabbler, a dilletante”. Perhaps it’s an extension of definition (e) from the OED linked upthread.
…
I bet we could have a 10-page thread on just the exclamatory and idiomatic uses of the isolated word “Right …” in British conversation. 
As it’s used in film, mildly sarcastic uses of "Right … seem to condlusively outnumber straightforward earnest uses of the same.
Dinner (evening meal)
Blimey, never heard that one.