I recently visited Seattle. The chauffeur picking me up at the airport asked me on the way to my hotel if I had eaten dinner yet. I said, yes, I ate it around 1 p.m. He laughed and said that seemed a bit late. It finally clicked that we were using different terms for the midday and evening meals.
When I was raised, dinner was the evening meal and lunch the midday meal. He said he was raised to call the midday meal dinner and the evening meal supper.
Can someone explain what’s going on? Why is there a “dinner theatre” but also a “supper club?”
What’s the difference? Probably where you’re standing.
At least, it used to be mostly a geographic thing. Now, with the portability of the population and the prevalence of “American Standard English” on television (and the prevalence of television itself), a lot of regionalisms are leveling out.
sup·per
A light evening meal when dinner is taken at midday.
A light meal eaten before going to bed.
din·ner
The chief meal of the day, eaten in the evening or at midday.
lunch
A meal eaten at midday.
break·fast
The first meal of the day, usually eaten in the morning.
Applying the foregoing definitions, if you wake up late due to a hangover, and you eat your first meal of the day at midday, and that meal is the largest or “chief” meal of the day, then you have just eaten breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the same sitting.
If you eat a meal afterward, and that meal is smaller than your first meal, then you would call it “supper.” If the later meal is larger than your midday meal, then the later meal becomes “dinner” and the midday meal is no longer considered “dinner” but merely a breakfast/lunch combo.
Dinner was the name for the main meal of the day. 150 years ago, that was served midday, mostly because in rural America, that was the best time for a large meal. Everyone had been working all morning and was ready for something big, and it was easier making a big meal when everything was still light. Supper was served at the end of the day, and was generally lighter, often leftovers from dinner.
As America urbanized, it was difficult for a worker to take the time off during midday for a big meal. So the biggest meal was eaten at night. (Better lighting and better cooking equipment also made it easier). Since that was now the biggest meal, people started calling it dinner, and calling the midday meal, lunch.
This is the most common form. However, in more rural areas, (and IIRC, in the South) the midday meal remained dinner and the evening meal remained supper. It’s now a regionalism.
I’ve always understood that SUPPER was the LAST meal of the day. Whatever size. Think of the old-time “Supper Clubs”. Ciro’s, Mogombo, Stork Club, Chez Paree etc…
DINNER is the MAIN meal usually eaten in the EVENING. Ready to put on the table as soon as Pop came home from work. SUNDAY “dinner” was in mid-afternoon.
I think ‘Dinner’ is both a more formal occasion and a main meal. ‘Supper’ is more casual - more of a friends / family affair - and often a less substantial meal. Of course, friends / family can have dinner but it probably involves an ironed shirt. Non family / friends can also be invited to supper but that’s a bit like welcoming them as friends – or because you forgot to go shopping.
In my family, “supper” and “dinner” were used interchangably for the evening meal Mondays through Saturdays. On Sundays, “dinner” was the noon meal, probably because on that day it was the biggest meal. When we got together for Sunday dinner, therefore, we knew we were talking about lunch.
Midday-afternoon; Eat in its Dinner, eat out its lunch.
Evening; Eat in its Tea/supper, eat out its Dinner.
That used to be the way it was in our family but this has changed to just weekend meals for some reason, but then I guess thats just my family for you.
I grew up in Northern New England in a French Canadian family. Dinner was the midday meal and supper was the evening meal. This use of the terminology was more common in the older members of our extended family and the people we knew who were “locals”, in the Yankee sense of the word. So I don’t know if it was specifically a regional variation, as it might have been ethnic as well. I don’t hear it so much anymore.
