I see “linner,” the term for a meal between lunch and dinner, has made it to the Urban Dictionary, but I swear I heard it on some sitcom first as the cockamamie idea of some character. Damned if I can remember who, though. I believe it was used on Seinfeld (it’s the kind of thing I’d expect from Kramer), but as an already established noun, at least in the later episodes I’ve been binging on lately.
Who, then? Cliff on Cheers!? Alan on Two and a Half Men? Niles on Frasier? Sheldon on*** Big Bang Theory***? I don’t watch many sitcoms any more, so it almost has to be one of these.
That’s probably it, then, though I’m pretty sure I’ve heard it elsewhere. I was watching “The Invitations” on line early this morning and caught it, thinking “Hm, that sounds familiar.”
It’s an old concept. I remember it going pretty far back in my life, it follows naturally from the concept of brunch. I have no idea what the first sitcom to use it was but it could have been a throw away line in something very old. You might even find it going back into the 50s from shows like Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, etc., it’s the type of question you’d put into a child’s mouth back then.
Yeah, I used it definitely by the 90s, and while I can’t say I definitely used it in the 80s, I didn’t need prompting by a sitcom to come up with the idea myself: it’s an obvious concept that there should be a term for a late lunch/early dinner combo.
I was actually going to joke “linner or lupper,” but I thought “lupper” just sounded silly. It was always “linner” in our group. I’m not sure why “lupper” sounds more ridiculous, but there’s something about “linner” that feels more natural than “lupper.” Maybe because there’s more words that start with “lin-” than “lup-.”
Isn’t the meal between lunch and dinner called “tea”?
Seriously, I know most Americans think of that as a UK term, but I think it persisted in the US for a while. Most Americans didn’t use the term, because most Americans didn’t have a fourth meal, but people who did used the word “tea.” No meal at that time, no need for a word.
“Brunch,” IIRC, was invented by restaurants when more modern technology allowed them to offer broader menus during the day, so two people could eat together at 11am, one having eggs, and the other a sandwich. They termed it “brunch” to make it clear that you could order both breakfast and lunch items.
Most restaurants serve the same things for lunch and dinner, it’s just a difference in portions, or sometimes sides, but there’s no real significant menu change from lunch to dinner. If there were, we’d have a term, but there isn’t so we don’t.
FWIW, though, I’ve seen restaurants that have their items listed, with two different prices, one for the lunch plate, and one for the dinner plate, the lunch plate being cheaper, and usually having a smaller portion, no bread or salad included.
That may have been where you heard it first, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t originate there. “Linner” (along with “lupper”) appears in The Appropriate Word: Finding the Best Way to Say what You Mean, a 1990 book by J. N. Hook, but even he refers to the word as an already-existing one that never caught on. (This book predates all the sitcoms in your list except Cheers, but I’ve just finished watching the first eight seasons and can confirm that the word was never used there.)
I also think, while the portmanteau was an obvious one once “brunch” became popular, the reason “linner” or “lupper” or even “dunch” didn’t quite get traction is because the concept isn’t as interesting. There is, at least in American culture, a fairly established divide between breakfast food and lunch food, but the differences between lunch and dinner are much less so, so there’s no real need for a word combining the two concepts. I mean, look how fast food menus are usually bifurcated, with a clear breakfast menu, and then just a rest-of-the-day menu for lunch and dinner.
We always called such a meal “lupper” as far back as I can remember.
If you want to be excruciatingly correct, “dinner” properly refers to the biggest meal of the day, regardless of when it is served. If you had a meal in between, it’s unlikely any of them would be bigger than either of the others. So it would be lunch, lupper, supper.
I’m surprised no one has pointed out that the in between meal is properly called “tea”.