Explanation if any of our foreign cousins want it.
Tea, short for tea time.
In the South you used to (and still do) have the following three meals a day:
Breakfast, lunch, dinner.
In the North, however…
Breakfast, dinner, tea.
Both might tie the end of the day off with supper too. Brunch is for the jobless middle class and wandered into the conversation with yuppies in the 80s.
There’s also a tea break, which is usually just a cup (or mug if you are a ruffian) of tea. Not to be confused with tea time, where you might reasonably expect to eat your dinner.
Then there’s high tea, which yes, features tea. Often a pot and almost never a mug. It frequently comes with anemic sandwiches and perhaps a scone.
He’s making things up and moved the goal posts of his claim several times when he got corrected.
Apparently, according to him, the terms ‘afternoon tea’ and ‘high tea’ have been informally switched in the UK, and apparently everyone knows this but it’s not in the wikipedia artical because…
Second goal post move, he’s apparently not talking about the British custom of tea here, but of tea in some other as yet un-named country.
Edit: Chat we’ve hit 3 goal post moves! I repeat, the third goal post has been moved. Our man isn’t playing on any team now and has gone rogue on the pitch as apparently now everything he’s said was all supposed to be just a flippant joke! Lmao.
Dinner, as the main meal, used to be closer to midday in agrarian times, with the evening meal being a light supper. Only the industrial revolution, with workers spending most of the working day in the workplace, changed this.
Interestingly most Psych units I’ve worked (US) serve (roughly timed):
0800 - breakfast
along with a lightly caffeinated coffee or tea, the only caffeine routinely served
1200 - lunch
1700 - dinner
2000 - snack
usually prepackaged chips and crackers, sometimes cookies or ice cream. The long stay hospital gave the patients 25¢ for every group they attended and they could order nicer stuff from the staff member who made the weekly Walmart trip.
Interestingly, in Canada “high tea” is a fancy afternoon tea with little sandwiches and desserts. Often something you can book at posh hotels like Fairmonts.
What you’ve done there is confuse what I was describing as usage with historical context.
What you just said is like saying, “actually Gay really means just happy”.
I mean, yes, it did, but now not so much.
And that’s the difference between descriptive and prescriptive usage.
David Foster Wallace talks about it a fair bit in one of his essays. Prescriptive description of English usage being somewhat colonial and, to an extent, authoritarian as well as being particularly useless on the ground, so to speak.
So yeah, it was that way around, but try using it that way round now and see how far you get.
I’ll copy it over too, just in case you also don’t remember how to click on links, chief.
Explanation if any of our foreign cousins want it.
Tea, short for tea time.
In the South you used to (and still do) have the following three meals a day:
Breakfast, lunch, dinner.
In the North, however…
Breakfast, dinner, tea.
Both might tie the end of the day off with supper too. Brunch is for the jobless middle class and wandered into the conversation with yuppies in the 80s.
There’s also a tea break, which is usually just a cup (or mug if you are a ruffian) of tea. Not to be confused with tea time, where you might reasonably expect to eat your dinner.
Then there’s high tea, which yes, features tea. Often a pot and almost never a mug. It frequently comes with anemic sandwiches and perhaps a scone.
I hope that clears things up.
So apparently all this here isn’t you explaining about the British custom of ‘tea’ in a top comment on a thread about ‘wacky things British people say’, but is actually you just explaining about the ‘tea’ custom of a totally unrelated and as yet un-named country?..
Seriously, chief, this one is on you. You goofed up and didn’t like being corrected, so you had this little tantrum trying to ‘no, you’ your way into still being right. Lmao. That’s pathetic.
In my house we use the Southern words during the week and the Northern version on Sundays, as in Sunday Dinner. Are we weird or does anyone else do that?
I’m from the north but live with southerners now. I grew up with dinner at noon (in school—dinner time, dinner-ladies).
We’ve now compromised on breakfast, lunch, tea, and on Sunday it’s a grey area between Sunday lunch and Sunday dinner depending on how much the schedule has slipped.
I’ve always called it Sunday lunch, but do use a mush of dinner and tea. Dinner is just the biggest meal of the day, and may or may not be at tea time.
In the South you used to (and still do) have the following three meals a day:
Breakfast, lunch, dinner.
In the North, however…
Breakfast, dinner, tea.
In the South, we sometimes have “breakfast, dinner, supper” (especially in rural areas; city folks are more likely to have “breakfast, lunch, dinner”) and our tea definitely has ice and a fuckton of sugar in it.
Maybe it’s a culture thing, but that comes across as a wildly patronising comment from someone who just wandered into a conversation about “not the US” and started talking about the US.
Yeah as someone that’s a Yankee to both of them, it’s rude as hell here to be an ass in response to a polite correction to something you probably should have noticed.
There’s a thing about any conversation online being interrupted by Americans making it about themselves and saying some incredibly patronising things… And that phrase is really only ever heard as that here.
But I see this might not be the case, so I apologise for my hostility there.
The thing is, you might not know! A work colleague who calls their 12:30pm break their “dinner break”, might separately go home and ask their partner “what should we have for dinner?”.
Explanation if any of our foreign cousins want it.
Tea, short for tea time.
In the South you used to (and still do) have the following three meals a day:
Breakfast, lunch, dinner.
In the North, however…
Breakfast, dinner, tea.
Both might tie the end of the day off with supper too. Brunch is for the jobless middle class and wandered into the conversation with yuppies in the 80s.
There’s also a tea break, which is usually just a cup (or mug if you are a ruffian) of tea. Not to be confused with tea time, where you might reasonably expect to eat your dinner.
Then there’s high tea, which yes, features tea. Often a pot and almost never a mug. It frequently comes with anemic sandwiches and perhaps a scone.
I hope that clears things up.
Not really. You had me in the first half, tho.
Right? I’m clearly far too American to understand. I’m more confused than I was before.
Wait until you find out you can have pudding for pudding.
Edit: Since it’s mean not to explain - pudding is another way to say desert.
How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?
He’s making things up and moved the goal posts of his claim several times when he got corrected.
Apparently, according to him, the terms ‘afternoon tea’ and ‘high tea’ have been informally switched in the UK, and apparently everyone knows this but it’s not in the wikipedia artical because…
Second goal post move, he’s apparently not talking about the British custom of tea here, but of tea in some other as yet un-named country.
Edit: Chat we’ve hit 3 goal post moves! I repeat, the third goal post has been moved. Our man isn’t playing on any team now and has gone rogue on the pitch as apparently now everything he’s said was all supposed to be just a flippant joke! Lmao.
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Nor does spouting shit and doubling down with yet more shit when you’re corrected.
Anyway, why would I want to be friends with you? That shit you spouted wasn’t even funny bro.
Dinner, as the main meal, used to be closer to midday in agrarian times, with the evening meal being a light supper. Only the industrial revolution, with workers spending most of the working day in the workplace, changed this.
Where my family’s from, that naming convention is still used.
Breakfast - first meal of the day
Dinner - midday meal
Supper - evening meal
Lunch - a small snack with no specific time
Interestingly most Psych units I’ve worked (US) serve (roughly timed):
0800 - breakfast
1200 - lunch
1700 - dinner
2000 - snack
Yep, and that industrial revolution is responsible for the N/S split in terms too, the factories of the north and all that.
Wrong way round.
High tea is/was the working class term for an evening meal as it was had at the table, and it would usually include cooked meat.
Afternoon tea is the posh one in the afternoon with the cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off.
Interestingly, in Canada “high tea” is a fancy afternoon tea with little sandwiches and desserts. Often something you can book at posh hotels like Fairmonts.
I’ve seen places here mix them up too, it’s not uncommon.
If you want to be a pedant or just find this sort of thing amusing, you could send the hotel restaurant a link to the wikipedia page.
Ah Britain, sailing the high teas
What you’ve done there is confuse what I was describing as usage with historical context.
What you just said is like saying, “actually Gay really means just happy”.
I mean, yes, it did, but now not so much.
And that’s the difference between descriptive and prescriptive usage.
David Foster Wallace talks about it a fair bit in one of his essays. Prescriptive description of English usage being somewhat colonial and, to an extent, authoritarian as well as being particularly useless on the ground, so to speak.
So yeah, it was that way around, but try using it that way round now and see how far you get.
Ok, go edit the wikipedia article then if you’re so sure of yourself.
Errr… That’s not what I’m saying chief. I’m saying you are right, just that things have changed in usage.
The wiki article actually says that too.
Can you quote the bit? I’m not seeing it. The only place anything similar is mentioned refers to it happening outside of the uk.
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Bruh. You literally posted this: https://slrpnk.net/post/40256413/23312028
I’ll copy it over too, just in case you also don’t remember how to click on links, chief.
So apparently all this here isn’t you explaining about the British custom of ‘tea’ in a top comment on a thread about ‘wacky things British people say’, but is actually you just explaining about the ‘tea’ custom of a totally unrelated and as yet un-named country?..
Seriously, chief, this one is on you. You goofed up and didn’t like being corrected, so you had this little tantrum trying to ‘no, you’ your way into still being right. Lmao. That’s pathetic.
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I somehow feel more informed and more confused at the same time.
Can I use the same mug to microwave all of my meals and tea? I promise to wipe the inside clean with the corner of my shirt.
isn’t that how you are supposed to do it?
In my house we use the Southern words during the week and the Northern version on Sundays, as in Sunday Dinner. Are we weird or does anyone else do that?
I’m from the north but live with southerners now. I grew up with dinner at noon (in school—dinner time, dinner-ladies).
We’ve now compromised on breakfast, lunch, tea, and on Sunday it’s a grey area between Sunday lunch and Sunday dinner depending on how much the schedule has slipped.
Oh yeah, that’s definitely a thing too!
I’ve always called it Sunday lunch, but do use a mush of dinner and tea. Dinner is just the biggest meal of the day, and may or may not be at tea time.
What about second breakfast?
10 o’clock tea and elevenses could both reasonably fit the bill here I feel.
It’s not a north/south thing It’s a working class/posho thing
There’s a degree of that, but having lived all over the UK in the last 50 years, I can tell you it really is a North/South thing.
This however also directly correlates with the historical rich/poor divide of the country.
The south has historically been richer, and this is still seen today even with the wealth accumilation that major cities have developed.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/dvc1370/
So, you agree with me. It is a North South thing?
It’s a rich poor thing just as much as a north south thing.
can confirm, ex’s Manc dad used to call it “Tea”
What time do you usually have these?
Are we talking South dinner or North dinner? .
In the South, we sometimes have “breakfast, dinner, supper” (especially in rural areas; city folks are more likely to have “breakfast, lunch, dinner”) and our tea definitely has ice and a fuckton of sugar in it.
Are we both talking about the UK here?
Ice and sugar in tea feels distinctly not British at all.
Bless your heart. 😉
Maybe it’s a culture thing, but that comes across as a wildly patronising comment from someone who just wandered into a conversation about “not the US” and started talking about the US.
It’s not a cultural thing, it is universally unhinged
Yeah as someone that’s a Yankee to both of them, it’s rude as hell here to be an ass in response to a polite correction to something you probably should have noticed.
It was meant to be a tongue-and-cheek confirmation that, yes, I was joking about the American south.
It didn’t land well.
Ok, then I’m sorry.
There’s a thing about any conversation online being interrupted by Americans making it about themselves and saying some incredibly patronising things… And that phrase is really only ever heard as that here.
But I see this might not be the case, so I apologise for my hostility there.
If my joke doesn’t land that’s my fault, not yours.
You can also have “breakfast, lunch and tea”, or breakfast, dinner and dinner".
I’m sure. Although I’ve never met anyone who uses breakfast dinner dinner.
Like, seriously, I can’t imagine living like that.
The thing is, you might not know! A work colleague who calls their 12:30pm break their “dinner break”, might separately go home and ask their partner “what should we have for dinner?”.