Meals

Question

What do typical meals in England consist of?
Breakfast: still bacon, eggs?
lunch
What is the typical time for lunch?
What is the difference between dinner and supper?
I am looking for some connotations.
Regards,
Pawel

Usenet · Accepted Answer

At 23:17:27 on Thu, 1 Dec 2005, apprentice (Email Removed) wrote in :
[nq:1]What do typical meals in England consist of? Breakfast: still bacon, eggs?[/nq]
That's nothing to do with language.
[nq:1]lunch What is the typical time for lunch?[/nq]
That's nothing to do with language.
[nq:1]What is the difference between dinner and supper?[/nq]
That is to do with language. Dinner is the main meal of the day, whether it is taken in the middle of the day or in the evening.

For those who eat dinner in the middle of the day, the evening meal (a rather lighter meal) is supper, or sometimes it is known as tea.

For those who eat dinner in the evening, the meal in the middle of the day (again, a light meal) is lunch. This is short for luncheon, a word which still survives in various phrases such as luncheon meat. Tea, if taken, is a light afternoon snack of sandwiches, cake etc.
Molly Mockford
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety - Benjamin Franklin (My Reply-To address *is* valid, though may not remain so for ever.)

Usenet · Answer

"Molly Mockford" (Email Removed) wrote...0
[nq:2]What do typical meals in England consist of? Breakfast: still bacon, eggs?[/nq]
[nq:1]That's nothing to do with language.[/nq]
Try asking at uk.food+drink.misc those gluttons will fill you in alright.
Matti

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]What do typical meals in England consist of? Breakfast: still bacon, eggs? lunch What is the typical time for lunch?[/nq]
Lunchtime.
[nq:1]What is the difference between dinner and supper?[/nq]
That depends on ones social class.
[nq:1]I am looking for some connotations.[/nq]
HTH.
Giles

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]=20 What do typical meals in England consist of? Breakfast: still bacon, eggs?[/nq]
Almost nobody has bacon and eggs except when staying in an hotel, or for = a
treat.
[nq:1]lunch What is the typical time for lunch?[/nq]
Varies with latitude the South have a midday meal later than the North. I always had difficulty ringing southern people in the early afternoon.
[nq:1]What is the difference between dinner and supper?[/nq]
Large parts of the UK never eat dinner, they have tea, after returning = from
work.
[nq:1]I am looking for some connotations.[/nq]
There are no connections, it all depends which part of the UK you live, = and
which socioeconomic group A, B, C, D, E you inhabit, and several other factors, such as tradition, working hours
The traditional meal times you refer to were used by the Upper Class, and not many others. The Upper Class who did not have to work are dwindling into insignificance, even the Royals now have jobs.

My roots are Working Class, but the family is moving up to a C, lower middle Class.=20
=20
Dave Fawthrop Sick of Premium SMS scams, SMS marketing, Direct marketing phone calls, Silent phone calls?=20 Register with http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/
IME they work :-)

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]That's nothing to do with language.[/nq]
[nq:1]Try asking at uk.food+drink.misc those gluttons will fill you in alright.[/nq]
Ouch!
=20
Dave Fawthrop Sick of Premium SMS scams, SMS marketing, Direct marketing phone calls, Silent phone calls?=20 Register with http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/
IME they work :-)

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Breakfast: still bacon, eggs?[/nq]
Cauliflower puree with jerked pemmican, washed down with a bottle or two of Entre Deux Jambes.
[nq:1]lunch[/nq]
alpha pi and a kappa T.
[nq:1]What is the typical time for lunch?[/nq]
Half an hour.
[nq:1]What is the difference between dinner and supper?[/nq]
Dinner is at 12 o' clock. Supper is before you go to bed, i.e. before 12 0'clock.
Paul Burke

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]What do typical meals in England consist of? Breakfast: still bacon, eggs?[/nq]
[nq:1]Almost nobody has bacon and eggs except when staying in an hotel, or for a treat.[/nq]
There was a survey a few years back which gave a figure of about 1% of people who eat a cooked breakfast of this sort at home on a daily basis. There is a residual feeling that this is how breakfast ought to be, but as you say, almost nobody really eats like that. However, you might find more people would eat that sort of breakfast at the weekends, probably late in the morning and not followed by lunch. Another category who'd eat a cooked breakfast would be workmen going on to manual labour, who'd typically eat it at a "greasy spoon" cafe rather than at home.
I disagree with Molly about this not being a language issue. The issue here is what is meant by the word "breakfast". Consider its usage in the phrase "all-day breakfast" which you may find on the menu at a greasy spoon cafe. This suggests that the word "breakfast" on its own can refer to a meal of bacon and eggs, even though that's not meal most people would eat at breakfast time.
[nq:2]lunch What is the typical time for lunch?[/nq]
[nq:1]Varies with latitude the South have a midday meal later than the North. I always had difficulty ringing southern people in the early afternoon.[/nq]
For most people, lunch would be sometime between 12 and 2, wouldn't it? Again, maybe later at weekends.
[nq:2]What is the difference between dinner and supper?[/nq]
[nq:1]Large parts of the UK never eat dinner, they have tea, after returning from work.[/nq]
Doesn't calling the evening meal "tea" correlate with calling the mid-day meal "dinner"? This is more a class thing than a regional thing - northerners will often claim they eat "breakfast-dinner-tea" and southerners eat "breakfast-lunch-dinner", but I can assure you that working class southerners also call their meals "breakfast-dinner-tea". As a southerner from a working class background, I never used the word "lunch" until I reached adulthood and moved away from home.
"Supper" is an odd word - I'm not sure many people habitually use it. It's largely been displaced by "dinner" becoming the usual word for the evening meal, and those who still use "dinner" to mean the mid-day meal use "tea" to mean the evening meal. If it means anything, I'd say it means an evening meal taken later than "tea", and also a meal that must definitely consist of hot food, whereas "tea" could just be bread and cakes.

Matthew Huntbach

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]There was a survey a few years back which gave a figure of about 1% of people who eat a cooked breakfast of this sort at home on a daily basis. There is a residual feeling that this is how breakfast ought to be,[/nq]
A visitor to Britain would probably stay in b&b, where they would almost certainly be offered eggs and bacon for breakfast. Or worse in Scotland.

Paul Burke

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Doesn't calling the evening meal "tea" correlate with calling the mid-day meal "dinner"? This is more a class thing than ... from a working class background, I never used the word "lunch" until I reached adulthood and moved away from home.[/nq]
As a child in 1960s Hampshire, we always had "breakfast-dinner-tea". On the occasions when we had our main hot meal at the end of the afternoon we called it having dinner at tea-time. Midday was always dinner-time. I think our background would have been called lower-middle-class.

Times have changed, and I now use "lunch" for midday.
[nq:1]"Supper" is an odd word - I'm not sure many people habitually use it. It's largely been displaced by "dinner" ... "tea", and also a meal that must definitely consist of hot food, whereas "tea" could just be bread and cakes.[/nq]
I would use "supper" to mean a small meal taken from mid-evening onwards, which could quite well consist just of a single sandwich or a bowl of cereal.

Cheers
Tony

Tony Mountifield
Work: (Email Removed) - http://www.softins.co.uk Play: (Email Removed) - http://tony.mountifield.org

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Doesn't calling the evening meal "tea" correlate with calling the ... "lunch" until I reached adulthood and moved away from home.[/nq]
[nq:1]As a child in 1960s Hampshire, we always had "breakfast-dinner-tea". On the occasions when we had our main hot meal ... dinner-time. I think our background would have been called lower-middle-class. Times have changed, and I now use "lunch" for midday.[/nq]
I used the same meanings in Essex. "Lunch" was a mid-morning snack. I think many of us have moved on not because of any perceived class terminology but simply because our lifestyles have changed. It's far more common to eat the main meal in the evening because it fits in with work patterns. Many more of us also eat out these days - what I'd eat in a restaurant in the evening could only be called "dinner" - there's no other word for it.
Usage still varies within my family - we have to specify which meal we mean by "dinner" to avoid confusion.
[nq:2]"Supper" is an odd word - I'm not sure many ... hot food, whereas "tea" could just be bread and cakes.[/nq]
[nq:1]I would use "supper" to mean a small meal taken from mid-evening onwards, which could quite well consist just of a single sandwich or a bowl of cereal.[/nq]
I'd use "supper" in that way but I've known those in recent years who'd use it far more generaly to refer to the big evening meal - I wonder if it's regional.
The word "brunch" was never used when I was a child but in practice I only ever eat a "full English breakfast" as a brunch. I couldn't face another meal for a long time after one of those.

Phil C.

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