I say dinner. My mom calls it supper and she is from Boston and is highly over educated!

OH--dinner only, in the evening, never supper.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I say dinner, my BF says supper. We were raised about 7 miles from one another in very similar settings. I don't get it.

The question is, where are each of your parents from? That is probably what makes the difference.

7 miles apart for the most part. His family has lived and worked on the same farm for generations, although my mother lived in the city during the school year and at the farm during the summer and breaks and we eventually moved out there when I was a toddler. All my aunts, uncles, and cousins from that town call it dinner too.

Anonymous wrote:I say dinner, my BF says supper. We were raised about 7 miles from one another in very similar settings. I don't get it.

The question is, where are each of your parents from? That is probably what makes the difference.

I am from Hong Kong. Supper is the meal around 10-12pm. Then go on to the next bar for drinks/fun.

Supper is what the kids eat. Come to suppper!

We grew up calling our meals breafast, dinnah, and suppuh. But like everyone else we now call our meals breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

I say dinner, my BF says supper. We were raised about 7 miles from one another in very similar settings. I don't get it.

From upstate NY. We used the words interchangeably growing up to mean the evening meal. I don't think it was a class distinction (my parents were college professors), rather a regionalism. Upstate NY is very much like the midwest. I only use "dinner" now, but I bet if you asked my husband "supper" has slipped out a few times.

Dinner.

I remember my mom referring to it as "supper" sometimes when I was a kid. She lived most of her life in Massachusetts, until I was 13 years old--then my whole family moved to California. I don't remember what my friends/their parents in Massachusetts called it. But in California, it was always dinner.

Another from the midwest whose parents called meals breakfast, lunch, and supper. Had nothing to do with the size of the meal though, just based on the time.

My parents both grew up in the country, so I think it's a generational thing as well as regional. My sisters and I say dinner (supper I picture sitting around the table in overalls!) for our evening meal. My mom and dad still use supper. Especially funny is when they have breakfast for supper!!

I grew up in the South. My grandmother calls lunch "dinner" and the evening meal is supper. The term supper drives me bonkers

Grew up calling it supper in Ohio, but Sunday lunch was referred to as dinner. When I moved to DC I started calling the evening meal dinner, and my mom thought it was somehow pretentious.

We were not blue collar, by the way. It may also be more of a generational thing.

Dinner, but my mom and grandma were from Kansas and called it supper. I don't care for that word myself, but agree with previous posters who said dinner refers to the main mmeal regardless of time and lunch and supper refer to a smaller meal and are time specific.

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.