what is dinner

[Tuesday Afternoon]

Poll question: what is dinner

[kentauros]

1. Dinner is supper.

However, I learned the hard way that my father used to know dinner as lunch when he was growing up. We never called it that in our family, but one day he asked me to join them for dinner. Thinking he had meant supper, I showed up around 6pm, and nothing was ready. He said I'd missed it and was none too happy about that, either. When he explained dinner meant lunch, my first thought was "Since when?"

I didn't leave hungry, but I learned to ask for clarification in the future ;)

[xchrom]

2. dinner can be supper.

but supper is not always dinner.

for example of you're a midwesterner of a certain age -- and you are churched -- supper is what happens on sundays after you get home from a long sunday morning at church.

that is supper but it is not dinner.

[old mark]

3. For me, dinner is supper, but for others around here lunch is dinner...

some folks refer to their lunch box as a "dinner bucket" here in PA Dutch land...where everyone who is NOT PA Dutch is referred to as "English", and have been since the 1600's.


mark

[GreenPartyVoter]

5. Oh, PA Dutch have some infteresting turns of phrases. My mom grew up in that area and I used

to laugh at her for saying things like, "Don't drink that soda all gone before the food gets here."

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. I'm a supper-dinner, but my husband is a lunch-dinner, so it gets used interchangeably.

[Inchworm]

6. Dinner is lunch here

That has always caused me confusion as I traveled.

:hi:

[astral]

7. I've never eaten supper. n/t

[hippywife]

8. I grew up in the north.

I now live in the south and confuse people when I call supper dinner.

[murielm99]

9. We don't even say it the same way in our immediate

family. I always say dinner. My brother says supper.

It can depend on the size of the meal. A huge meal at noon is not lunch. It is dinner. And since much of my family farmed, I learned that lunch is a midmorning meal that is brought out into the field for the people who have been planting or harvesting since dawn. Dinner is a big sit-down meal for the crew that takes place around noon. Supper is later, when everyone comes back hot and tired. There better be enough food to go around for that meal, too.

[Lucian]

10. Calling lunch dinner just isn't right.

There's a reason they call breakfast + lunch = "brunch" and not "brinner."

[yankeepants]

11. Fadina

What you ask? What's a Fadina? Maybe chicken. Maybe pasta. I know, let's order Pizzafadina!

[peace13]

12. Dinner can be supper.

Dinner can be lunch. Mmmmm, Sunday dinner is usually at noon.
But...lunch can never be supper.

[yankeepants]

13. Supper bucket

Mr. Yankeepants and I get a little giggle out of calling the cooler he takes his lunch to work in his Supper bucket.

[Arugula Latte]

14. I used to be confused as a kid about this

when I'd read books (maybe Little House on the Prairie or something) and Laura and Mary would bring Pa his "dinner" in the field. I finally figured out that meant lunch.

[Moondog]

15. Dinner is dinner, a meal that occurs several hours following lunch.

I do, however, get the fact that some southerners make this distinction between dinner and supper. And while my southern credentials, family tree-wise, are most definitely intact, this is a distinction that I do not make.

Perhaps this is a flaw in my character. Perhaps I spent too much time north of the Mason-Dixon line. Or perhaps I spent too many years living overseas.

In any event dinner is the meal that one consumes in the evening, assuming that one is not a shift-worker living his or her life in the netherworld, in which case all bets are off and one can call any meal any damned thing he or she wants to call it.

[Curmudgeoness]

16. I have to wonder, why there are two words for the same thing,

whether it is dinner is lunch or dinner is supper. I have never been anywhere that dinner meant lunch, but if there is food available, I am all in. Call it whatever you want.

[madinmaryland]

17. I am having sushi for dinner tonight.

:shrug:

[Sky Masterson]

18. Turkey Chili and a cold Becks beer

:hi:

[TheCentepedeShoes]

19. Ordinarily the mid-day meal

is lunch and the evening meal is dinner
Except on special occasions like Thanksgiving, Christmas or Easter when we may have only one main meal and it is dinner whenever served