Do you refer to the evening meal as "supper" or "dinner"?

[Anonymous]

Wait a cotton-pickin' minute here! You mean a cold meal at midday is LUNCH and a hot midday meal is DINNER? All this time I've been eating two dinners apparently!

My mom never served a cold lunch, and to this day, I detest cold foods that are meant to be meals. Cold= breakfast or snack. I guess my midwest roots are showing too!

[Anonymous]

Strange that you Americans are so fussy about class like this considering most of the world thinks you are all low class anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wait a cotton-pickin' minute here! You mean a cold meal at midday is LUNCH and a hot midday meal is DINNER? All this time I've been eating two dinners apparently!

My mom never served a cold lunch, and to this day, I detest cold foods that are meant to be meals. Cold= breakfast or snack. I guess my midwest roots are showing too!

UH oh!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree with the PP who said it is more of a class distinction--working class people tend to say supper. This is just my observation.

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/22446/lunch-vs-dinner-vs-supper-times-and-meanings

Employee announcing "Dinner is served". Obvious class distinction.

Its the size of the meal, not the class of the consumer. The class distinction is with the timing, not the name. If an english aristocrat is having an informal evening meal, he will call it "a light supper." That said, they do tend to have more evening "dinners."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can top that (for outdated sayings). My grandmother referred to the refrigerator as "ice box" (it was once a container that held a square chunk of ice) and purses were always "pocket-bags". Love it. Wore a girdle and hose until the day she died (97).

Mother in law called the microwave, "the radar range" and sometimes called the car, "a machine." (Along with all those other old lady words like pocketbook, icebox, market, dungarees, luncheon, parlor, galoshes, and the front stoop.). Oh, and "Bully for you!"

I say pocketbook, market, luncheon, parlor, galoshes and front stoop.

Well, Bully for you ole gal! But I don't believe you say those words in context if you are under 60. Nobody even has a parlor anymore. We now have media rooms. Of course, MIL still said we played "parlor games" in there. And luncheon? Everybody shortens that to lunch these days (except for the formal office meal). I suppose you have a lunch pail, too.

Media room? Hahahaha! Just move your laptop or iPad into the next room, baby. No need to have a TV, much less a dedicated room for it. Media room, indeed.

See how easy it is to make someone feel old?

[Anonymous]

Dinner. DH will call it supper to annoy me (He never called it supper either).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"My mom gets really upset that we do not eat in the dining room every night (mostly eat at breakfast bar in kitchen as it seats 4) and that we don't use cloth napkins or china plates every night."

My mother taught me that only the help or poor people eat in the kitchen.

All of this insight totally explains DCUM.

First poster in chain here. Did you not realize how much more prevalent class distinctions were in past generations? My mother is always saying what is (was) low class and I just listen and then do what I want. She is in her 70s and it was a different world back then. My grandmothers were even more so.

in past generations, It was not as easy to move between classes, it didn't always have to do with money, and you couldn't research things on the Internet to find out how other people did things. There also wasn't as easily accessible media- tv and movies have led to us all acting more similarly. Class distinction are much less prevalent these days because most everyone has access to everything and its much harder to be oblivious of others' SES social norms. Also, few folks have full time, live in, household help anymore (which served to highlight class distinctions like who eats where) because now most everyone has machines, like dishwashers and washing machines, and services, like dry cleaning and pea pod, to handle all those old fashioned tasks for you.

Not all of us were raised by parents without class. Mine were quite progressive. Even marching in the civil rights protests. Even though my parents came from priveledged backgrounds, they still taught us that we were all the same. I'm guessing your parents did not tolerate long hair on thier sons. We're more of a Velvet Underground family.

[Anonymous]

I have run into this with my Midwestern in-laws. I am from here (DC). They are in Indiana. On a Sunday, they'll have a big meal in the middle of the day. Since it's the middle of the day, I call it lunch, adn say something, which I consider polite, like, "Thank you for the nice lunch!" after the mal. I have been quickly corrected and told that is "dinner." "Oh, okaaaay," I thought, "I thought dinner is at night-time but, oh well." Also along these lines, my MIL will ALWAYS ask us, "Whatcha havin' for supper?" ie when she is wanting to knwo what I have planned for dinner.

[Anonymous]

Dinner is the big meal, whether it's midday (Sunday dinner after church!) or in the evening.

Supper is always at night, and it's less fancy. Mac and cheese is supper. Steak with Port-blue cheese sauce is dinner.

[Anonymous]

I was the first to answer OP, and my answer is the correct one.

The distinction isn't whether the meal is hot or cold, but whether it is the main meal of the day.

If you eat chicken soup and a grilled cheese sandwich at noon, that's lunch.

If at noon you sit down to a large meal -- pork medallions, mashed potatoes, and steamed asparagus, with bread and butter and a side salad -- that's dinner.

If you are eating a large meal at both noon at 7 PM, heaven help you -- you are eating two dinners!

[Anonymous]

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2199&dat=19800831&id=g5YyAAAAIBAJ&sjid=VucFAAAAIBAJ&pg=3930,6853974

[Anonymous]

i always thought supper was a very late dinner. like 10pm.

[Anonymous]

I grew up in the mid-west and we always called it supper at night. Dinner was the meal on Sunday after church. Holiday meals like Christmas and Thanksgiving were always dinner regardless of the time.

[Anonymous]

12:49, perhaps that is for you and for many, but on our Midwestern farm, lunch was a cold meal and dinner was hot one. All evening meals were called supper. Any meal served after church on Sunday was dinner. Sunday supper was ususally leftovers from the preceding days.