this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2025
85 points (100.0% liked)

Linguistics

1625 readers
4 users here now

Welcome to the community about the science of human Language!

Everyone is welcome here: from laypeople to professionals, Historical linguists to discourse analysts, structuralists to generativists.

Rules:

  1. Instance rules apply.
  2. Be reasonable, constructive, and conductive to discussion.
  3. Stay on-topic, specially for more divisive subjects. And avoid unnecessary mentioning topics and individuals prone to derail the discussion.
  4. Post sources when reasonable to do so. And when sharing links to paywalled content, provide either a short summary of the content or a freely accessible archive link.
  5. Avoid crack theories and pseudoscientific claims.
  6. Have fun!

Related communities:

Resources:

Grammar Watch - contains descriptions of the grammars of multiple languages, from the whole world.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
lvxferre@mander.xyz
fossilesque@mander.xyz
85
"Dinner" has meant the morning, midday, and evening meal, at different points in time (en.wiktionary.org)
submitted 2 months ago by Zagorath@aussie.zone to c/linguistics@mander.xyz
24 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Today, dinner almost universally refers to the evening meal. But it has had a long etymological history to get to that point.

Those with older relatives might have noticed them say "dinner" to refer to the midday meal—what we would usually call "lunch" today. It's rather archaic today, but it used to be the dominant usage.

It comes to modern English from Old French disner (via Middle English dyner), which originally meant "breakfast", but later meant "lunch". Disner is evolved into modern French dîner, suggesting the same more recent history has taken place in that language as in English.

Disner comes, ultimately, from Latin *disiūnō, meaning "to break the fast".

So, depending on when you are, "dinner", and its etymological ancestors, could have meant breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] rhythmisaprancer@piefed.social 3 points 2 months ago

This was my experience living in rural southern Appalachia. If someone wanted to meet me after dinner, they meant early afternoon, not evening.