Indeed. I believe the distinction on when to use ‘dinner’ stems from the fact that dinner denotes the main meal of the day, and working class people typically ate that at lunchtime, whereas middle and upper class people would eat their main meal in the evening.
Supper was something only the wealthy would eat (an informal evening meal, often eaten quite late) - the working classes would already have eaten ‘tea’ at about 5pm. So these days, ‘supper’ is a term only generally used by people regarded as ‘posh’.
In my experience, there is a possible urban/non-urban divide related to the timing of the evening meal. Growing up in a small town, parents went to work early and got home in the late afternoon. When I moved to the city, I found that jobs started later and ended later, hence the later standard for meal time. Along with that came the urban sophisticate notion that evening meals before 8:00 PM were considered “gauche” because that is when people in the sticks ate. Writers and entertainment creators, being city folks, perpetuated the trope.
Oh, no. We had to eat precisely at six. Because “cocktail hour” was 5-5:30, and mom had to watch Dick Van Dyke reruns from 5:30-6. If you wanted to chat with her and help get dinner ready, you showed up at 5:30. If you wanted the cherry out of Dad’s Old Fashioned, you got home a half hour earlier. And if your sister already gotten to Dad, you had to settle for an olive from Mom’s martini (shudder… you’d think I’d’ve developed a taste for gin that way. Just the opposite).
But I canNOT remember ONE dinner that EVER started earlier or later than six sharp.
In Chicago in the 60s, the meals were breakfast, lunch and dinner. Tho if someone said supper, it was understood to be the same as dinner. As best I can recall, my recollection of the word supper came from the play “You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown.” As I recall, Snoopy does a song and dance celebrating "“Suppertime.”
My understanding (likely mistaken) was that the supper/dinner distinction was rural, when folk needed a big midday meal to work in the fields. Or possibly southern.
It would be interesting to hear folk also list when they go to bed, and when they wake up. When I was younger, I used to be a night owl and existed on less sleep, so eating later wouldn’t bother me. Now, I’m often in bed reading by 9, and wake every morning by 6. So the idea of eating at 8 and then going to bed right after clearing the dishes does not appeal.
I grew up calling the midday meal lunch, the evening meal supper, and the main meal of the day dinner. Which meant dinner was usually supper, but not on holidays, when dinner was midday, and we had supper after dinner.
As I kid I feel like we ate supper at 6 or 6:30, but these days we rarely eat before 7:30, and dinner at 8 is common. It’s about cooking after one of us gets home from work. We do sit down for a communal meal most evenings, and I like that.
I grew up with the three meals of the day being called breakfast, lunch and dinner. Supper was pretty much a synonym for dinner, but among the more southern-rural members of my extended family, they used supper to mean a more formal meal, often it was Sunday supper after church; it always had an old timey sound to me.
I was going to start a separate thread for meal nomenclature, but it’s probably not necessary. Growing up there were three distinct regular meals: breakfast - consumed in the morning, lunch - consumed midday, and* dinner *- consumed in the evening. “Supper” was not a term used in our household. If someone used the term, it would be assumed they came from a rural background.
I can’t comment on the time aspect; I’d guess 6:ish or so. However I’m another one whose family never used the word “supper”. To my mind (back then), that was a word for country folk. Many years later I had a friend who came from a small town in Mass. and she related that any time someone in the family used the word “dinner” her father said something like “DINNER! What, are we eating with the Kennedys?”
So, in the US it seems to have both regional and a bit of class distinction.
I just want to work “elevenses” into my daily conversations.
This, I’m sure, makes the biggest difference in supper times. I’m in bed reading or watching Netflix by 9:30 most nights. I can’t imagine eating supper at 8, doing the dishes and then going to bed!
I had one friend growing up whose parents called lunch “dinner”. They grew up in rural Wisconsin. In my world dinner and supper are the same thing. Dinner was usually used for a fancy supper.
I think the “gauche” label goes back to when we were an agrarian society, and farmers were up before dawn and went to bed early, so mealtimes were correspondingly early. Anything that distinguished the working class from the monied class was therefore “gauche.” Before the industrial revolution, a suntan marked you as working class, and the rich had milky white skin.
I don’t know how anyone with a job with conventional hours can get home and have dinner on the table by 5:00. Even if one spouse is at home to cook, few people can even get home by 5:00.
3:30, and I’m about to head home after putting in my 8.5. 6 minute commute. I do most of the cooking, and could easily have dinner on the table by 4:15.
But that’s not a job with conventional hours. Most jobs in the DC area end around 5.30, if the average commute is 45 minutes, people are walking in their front door around 6.15.
I disagree. I am a federal employee - of which there are a couple in the DC area.
A great many of them who are covered by the major union contracts are allowed to flex into the office between (IIRC) 6:30-9:30 a.m., after which they simply have to put in 8.5 hrs before leaving. Man such folk are allowed to work at home as many as 5 days a week. My personal practice is to get in around 7 and leave at 3:30.
This certainly does not apply to EVERY govt employee, but it has applied to EVERY employee in EVERY office I have worked in for the past 35 years (as well as the 100s of thousands of employees w/in my Agency). Hell, it is so bad that we can’t even require that our receptionist report for work during the hours that the public is allowed in our office! :smack:
And my impression is that a great many private employees enjoy flexible hours and work-from home.
Sure, a great many folk have to be present at work for certain set hours. But another great percentage enjoys flexibility such that their work hours - and mealtimes - reflect their preference, rather than necessity.
Work until six, at least an hour’s commute home (on a bad day, an hour and a half), so earliest we eat is 7:30, usually closer to 8:30. On most days, we don’t finish eating until 9:30
No amount of flexibility going to change the meaning of “conventional hours” to “whatever hours I happen to work” . It’s possible (but unlikely) that enough flexibility will at some time in the future strip the phrase “conventional hours” of all meaning - but that still wouldn’t mean that “conventional hours” includes working from 5am -1pm or 4pm to midnight.
