Supper or Dinner?

[AsylumSeeker]

Meal time is. of course, important, no matter what it's called. But, what should it be called?

One school of thought is breakfast, dinner, and then supper. Another is breakfast, lunch, followed by dinner.

I'm leaning towards the latter, but my mother refers to the former. What is more contemporary? I'm thinking the latter, but I might be wrong. Thoughts anyone?

 

[SydneyBlake]

Meal time is. of course, important, no matter what it's called. But, what should it be called?

One school of thought is breakfast, dinner, and then supper. Another is breakfast, lunch, followed by dinner.

I'm leaning towards the latter, but my mother refers to the former. What is more contemporary? I'm thinking the latter, but I might be wrong. Thoughts anyone?

"Breakfast, dinner, and supper," I think, is more common in rural American South. I grew up calling them that. I think outside that, "lunch and dinner" is more common. That's what I call them now; I rarely say "supper" anymore.

 

[PennLady]

FWIW, I grew up in South Jersey, and went to school in PA and lived in the DC area for fifteen years. It was always breakfast, lunch and dinner, although sometimes "supper" was used interchangeably with dinner.

The one thing that always got me was that sprinkles -- like you'd put on ice cream -- were "sprinkles" in DC/VA, but I had grown up calling them "jimmies." But that's awfully specific.

 

[MicKay]

Oh yeah....

"Breakfast, dinner, and supper," I think, is more common in rural American South.

Still say it that way.

 

[AsylumSeeker]

Could say "evening meal" I suppose.

 

[sr71plt]

The kicker is that "dinner" is meant for the major meal of the day (according to my dictionary). So, if you have a lighter meal in the evening than you did earlier, that evening meal could be called "supper." If you had "lunch" around noontime, then "dinner" is better for a heavier meal later in the evening. But you can probably use either one without raising hackles from . . . No, wait, Carlus posts to this board.

 

[CarlusMagnus]

"Breakfast, dinner, and supper," I think, is more common in rural American South. I grew up calling them that. I think outside that, "lunch and dinner" is more common. That's what I call them now; I rarely say "supper" anymore.

"Breakfast, dinner, and supper" was common in rural western PA when I grew up. All the farm kids (who all rode the bus to school) ate their dinners while the town kids went home for lunch. And the farm kids brought their food in "dinner pails"---if not "dinner pokes".

 

[snoopercharmbrights]

Meal time is. of course, important, no matter what it's called. But, what should it be called?

One school of thought is breakfast, dinner, and then supper. Another is breakfast, lunch, followed by dinner.

I'm leaning towards the latter, but my mother refers to the former. What is more contemporary? I'm thinking the latter, but I might be wrong. Thoughts anyone?

My personal list is breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner, and supper, in that order. That's my five-a-day and I get very grumpy if I miss any of them.

 

[lovecraft68]

It's always been breakfest, lunch, supper for me. This thread did make me realize though that if the meal is at home it is supper.

Any time I ever asked a woman out on a date, it was "would you like to go to dinner with me?"

The wife and I also go out for dinner, but have supper at home.

Also generally because I tend to stay up pretty late there is always a snack sometime after supper.

 

[Guest]

In my household we call it Breakfast, Lunch and supper.

 

[ebunny15]

We have breakfast, dinner and supper. it's only lunch at work. makes conversations interesting when we talk about dinner in the middle of the day and they equate it with the evening meal. Most of the people around us are of the 'breakfast lunch dinner' persuasion, but we are farming folk and they're not.

 

[AsylumSeeker]

Okay, thanks to all for sharing.

 

[LettersFromTatyana]

Monday through Friday, it was breakfast, lunch, and dinner or supper (my father said supper, my mother said dinner).

On Sunday, it was breakfast, dinner, and supper, since that was the one day when the large meal occurred just after noon.

 

[AsylumSeeker]

Monday through Friday, it was breakfast, lunch, and dinner or supper (my father said supper, my mother said dinner).

On Sunday, it was breakfast, dinner, and supper, since that was the one day when the large meal occurred just after noon.

Now that you mention it, me too. Grew up in NE U.S.

 

[palisa]

As others have mentioned, I think the key is the rural/urban difference, especially in earlier times. On the farm and to some extent in market towns, the biggest meal of the day was at noon, to keep a farm worker's energy up in the afternoon. Breakfast was the second-largest, and supper was third. (No farm wife had the energy left to cook a big meal at sundown.) "Dinner" was the term pegged to the biggest meal of the day. That was in the evening in the big cities, and that term gradually took over as the media expanded their reach.

"Dinner buckets" or "dinner pokes" were always just "lunch boxes" at my elementary and high school in the Midwest, though, even though the bulk of the people there referred to the noon meal as "dinner." But in the city, there was a "lunch counter" at Walgreen's and at the department stores even though, as almost everywhere, "diners" were pervasive.

 

[snoopercharmbrights]

I wonder if the traditional German "second breakfast" occurs in farming communities in the USA?

 

[_Lynn_]

We had breakfast, dinner, and supper where I grew up. Now I have breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I don't know when I made the switch but the word 'supper' reminds me of times best left in the past.

 

[SydneyBlake]

I wonder if the traditional German "second breakfast" occurs in farming communities in the USA?

I thought that was something Pippen and Merry made up.