I think it’s a Northern/Scots thing.
My mother came from the North of England and my father from the South - so I have been instilled with a curious and sometimes conflicting blend of these sorts of terminologies.
I suspect ‘punter’ might derive from the Irish word for a pound: a punt. It is associated with horse racing and betting and horse trading. At the races, the bookies and often dealing with gamblers waving pound notes at them to place a bet. Hence punters.
Respectable buyers of services from professionals are ‘clients’.
No so very respectable buyers of services from bookies and prostitutes are ‘punters’
A class snobbery thing?
Meat tea? No!
Mint tea, is very popular with the ladies.
Breakfast, Dinner and Tea is Northern English
Breakfast, Lunch and Supper is Southern English
Of course if you are a Hobbit inhabiting that fictional parody of England, The Shire, mealtimes are more extensive.
Breakfast, Second Breakfast, Elevenses, Lunch, Afternoon Tea, Dinner and Supper.
Those little guys in Lord of the Rings obviously had a higher metabolic rate.
The etymology of “punter” is deeply obscure, but it certainly isn’t from the Gaelic punt, which is a modern word.
It’s probably ultimately from punctum, Latin, a pinprick or point. (“Puncture” is from the same root.) By the early seventeenth century, the french pointe or ponte was being used to refer to an ace card, presumably because it was marked with one pip or point. It then came to refer specifically to the player who, in a game of faro, plays against the bank (and who could always beat the bank if holding an ace); from there, to one who plays against the bank in any card game; from there, to any gambler playing against a bookmaker (and, therefore, to the customers of bookmakers); and from there, to any customer, but especially to customers of trades conducted with a degree of informality - gambling, prostitution, market trading.
I would but I have no idea who’s on the team*.
Substitute “American beer” for “tea” and “real beer” for “coffee” and ask yourself the same question.
In my 47 years as an Australian I have never heard any Australian use the term “Seppo” to mean an American except in a conversation about the slang term that Australians (allegedly) use to mean an American.
It’s potentially very slightly derogatory in the sense that it means “average, unsophisticated consumer of goods or services”. You would never use the term about, say, a truly knowledgeable buyer of antiques. So it can be insulting if the subject considers themselves to be better than ordinary, which of course many people do.
*Thanks Billy
Tea and supper are very different meals. The upper classes will have both. (Yes that is four meals.) Supper is taken very late in the evening, basically before bed, and after the evening’s activities. Tea would be taken late afternoon, and is more a large snack, to fortify one for the evening ahead. Of course the proletariat will be sound asleep in their hovels, without the benefit of light long before the upper classes take supper.
I have, but it’s not common, and the folks that use it are dying off.
It’s not a term I use (I’m not English), but I’ve never thought of it to be derogatory. More in terms of “gambling at life”, in a way. A bit like the Australian “battler”. Everyone is out there, trying their luck in the real world to make the best of it. A punter, in other words.
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner in this (central) part of the South
Concur. Supper is a night-time meal - normally a fairly light one - and tends (in my experience) to be more likely a social thing than other meals - i.e. cheese and crackers as a supper with friends.
It’s weird here. There seems to be no consensus.
In my family, as a kid: breakfast, lunch, tea (or sometimes dinner). If there was a rare late night snack, that was supper.
Then I found some of my schoolmates calling lunch “dinner”. That just weirded me out, and still does.
This could be an Australian thing. “Punt” is in common use in Australia to describe a running kick in football - the running player drops the ball from his hands and kicks it before it hits the ground. It’s frequently part of an attacking move - the ball is punted from the midfield to the foward area where (hopefully) a teammate will receive it and attempt a goal. Or, the punter may himself be attempting a goal, even while under pressure from the defending team. And I think this sense colours the word “punter” for Australians - a punter is trying, he hasn’t given up, he hopes to acheive something, he’s working towards a goal.
Whereas this context is lacking in the UK. From its original gambling roots, a punter in the UK is trusting to luck, opening himself up to chance, but not necessarily making any kind of effort or bringing any kind of skill to bear. He is hoping that fate will give him what he cannot achieve himself.
It’s easy. Dinner is a hot meal, typically involving meat, vegetables and some dietary starch, and usually at least one other course - soup, dessert, something like that.
You can have your dinner at lunchtime, or at teatime.
That’s probably somewhat true, but usage has blurred it to the point of lovely confusion.
(and thus, ‘dinnertime’ is also a thing, but what that thing is, isn’t universal)
Well, just as you can have your dinner at lunchtime or at teatime, so you can call that time “dinnertime” instead.
But - the confusing bit - you don’t have to be consistent. You can call the meal you take in the middle of the day “dinner” if it conforms to the meat-and-two-veg model already outlined, but still refer to that time as “lunchtime”. Or, if you have your meat-and-two-veg later on, you can still call it “dinner”, but call the occasion “teatime”. Or, in either of those cases, you can call the occasion “dinnertime”.
But it doesn’t work the other way around. If you call the occasion “dinnertime”, then the meal that you are eating has to be “dinner”, not “lunch” or “tea”.
What could be simpler?
Amusing username/post combo. 
Just to make things even simpler, it should be noted that the naming of meals and mealtimes isn’t a simple US/UK divide. Within the US there are regional differences in how meals and mealtimes are named; within the UK, both regional and class differences.
That doesn’t mean much though (if even true), except that people are generally consistent to their own terminology.
Yeah, to me, this isn’t a national, or even a regional, thing. Seems to be family by family.
Supper in Upper and Middle Middle Classes usually means the main meal eaten in the evening. Invites are to Supper rather than dinner parties. Oxford and Cambridge especially.
Their meal pattern is breakfast, lunch (or luncheon), tea (meaning drink and a snack on return from work, and supper in the evening.
For amusement, invites to supper are sent on plain white embossed cards called stiffies!
Punt is also an English term for a kick. In Soccer it means a toe kick rather than an inside foot kick. In rugby it is exactly the same as Aussie rules- a drop from hands directly onto the foot for a kick.
Taking a chance is often called taking a punt at something.
Don’t forget St Matthew’s Meal!
(and Après Lunch)
Interesting. I hadn’t heard that one before.