I grew up with “breakfast, dinner supper” but once I discovered that “dinner” has a very ambiguous meaning, I switched to “breakfast, lunch, supper”.
Agreed. Supper is a before bed snack.
I’ve talked about this a lot with people over the age of 70. The consensus among them seems to be that lunch was what you called the midday meal if it was cold, and dinner was what you called it if it was a full hot meal. Formality really had nothing to do with it then.
Gradually, the word lunch just took over for most people.
Yup - Yorkshireman here. We had dinner and tea. Occasionally we had cake and a cup of tea at 10PM or so and called that supper. Only effete southerners called the regular evening meal “supper”.
Often times you might find yourself having a spaghetti supper, or winner, winner, chicken dinner, sometimes you might eat a fish fry for supper, or a women’s luncheon is especially dainty… brunch is really the American “dinner”.
Wow.
No wonder the colonies rebelled.
I’m working in Standish right now, Capt. Ridley’s Shooting Party, but I live in Orrell.
The colonists are revolting…
Being English, such terms are obviously class as well as location riddled.
So growing up (with my working class turned middle class parents) I had dinner and tea.
At my posh private school, my posher classmates had lunch and either dinner or supper depending on how late the meal was.
Living my comfortable middle class lifestyle, I now have lunch and dinner. My girlfriend went through a ‘supper’ phase early in our relationship because her ex had ideas above her station. I soon wiped that nonsense out with a few arched eyebrows and ‘who do you think you are, miss fancypants’ chuckles.
For the upper classes, yes (Afternoon Tea, to be precise). For the rest of us plebs, tea would be the main meal, eaten around 6pm when Dad’s home from t’pit.
I used to call the evening meal “tea” because that’s what my Parents called it. But as time has passed, presumably influenced by culture or friends, I now call it “dinner”.
Midday meal has always been “lunch”.
“Supper” was the occasional late evening meal I might have, had there been an early dinner.
Yeah, I can’t believe “supper” is this popular. The word makes me physically cringe.
Grew up in Aspull. Went to college in Winstanley, near Orrell!
Nottingham, UK. Noon meal was dinner as a kid, but now has become lunch, dinner and tea are used pretty much interchangeably for the early evening meal and supper is a late evening snack.
On a Sunday and Christmas, I eat mid-afternoon and the meals are dinner.
The word dinner is barely in our vocabulary here: occasionally for a formal meal perhaps, (Would you like to come to our place for Thanksgiving dinner?) but otherwise the word just isn’t used. Lunch and supper is what we eat in Canada.
If you have it earlier in the day, you’re less stuffed by the time you go to bed. That’s especially good if you tend to have acid reflux.
Also, it’s one less meal that whoever’s cooking has to prepare. Nobody really wants a full meal after Thanksgiving dinner, so they’re generally happy to snack on leftovers or whatever else they can find in the kitchen.
Winstanley College, what what? Me too. Just down the road from my mum’s house, that. Ever drink in the Tudor? /hijack.
My parents always tried to have Thanksgiving and Christmas “dinner” at about 1 PM, even though this always meant that the turkey or roast had to go in the oven at an ungodly early hour. And yes, we never had a full evening meal after these dinners, everyone knew that Mama wasn’t about to fix another full meal. Everyone who was capable of fixing a plate of leftovers was expected to do so, though generally if one person was getting something, s/he would ask everyone else if they wanted something, too. In fact, when I visit my folks these days, they tend to have one big meal on the day I arrive, usually something in the crockpot, and then we eat leftovers for a day or so, then I fix a big meal, and we eat those leftovers.
If anybody wants another full meal just a few hours after Thanksgiving dinner, you’re doing it wrong.
It helps that our Thanksgiving dinners don’t have huge crowds. A 15 pound turkey doesn’t take so long to roast that having dinner early in the day is logistically impossible. It also helps if you cook your stuffing outside the turkey, like I do, since that makes the turkey cook faster.
Western Canadian here. Most people I know say dinner, not supper. I did notice when I visited relatives back east, they tended to say supper. Maybe an east-west thing. I’m guessing by your name you’re in Ontario? Because what other reason is there to be a Leafs fan? Okay, okay, cheap shot. 
First meal, that breaks the overnight fast, is breakfast. Once that is established:
If the biggest meal of the day is midday or evening, it’s dinner. Once that is established:
If the evening meal is not dinner, it is supper.
If the midday meal is not dinner, it is lunch.