Breakfast
Elevenses
Brunch
Lunch
Afternoon tea
Dinner
Supper
Midnight feast
this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2026
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Alright, calm down Frodo
But what about second breakfast?
Elevenses is GOAT.
What meal is this? The middle of the day? Or the one after work/school? Because I feel it’s incorrect for the east/west split in the south.
- Lunch in the middle of the day
- Tea after school - when you’re a kid
- Dinner after work - as a grownup
- Supper is optional and before bed. (Bad for you)
Location: new forest/hants.
I'm in Manchester and your interpretation is 100% correct. Although... I did grow up in Hythe.
I guess highlanders just starve?
There can be only one, and he doesn't call it anything.
It's a kind of magic
They asked multiple people but couldn't understand a word they were saying
Fuck this shite xenophobic bigoted patter
Ironically at least some of the Highland accents are often cited as the clearest English and the easiest to understand for non-native speakers.
I went to Madagascar 20 years ago. I turned on the radio in my cabin and it was tuned to BBC World Service. It was a bit of a trip hearing another tuechter's voice in the south Malagasy desert.
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No wonder Orkney and Shetland have left altogether. Maybe they moved back in with Norway
Who wants to live forever?
As a sometimes highlander: dinner far more common, but tea is the same thing
They eat as and when they catch something, with their bare teeth.
In Northern Scotland, they just don't eat.
I'm so far north i'm not even on the map. We mostly eat fish and wind for our 'tea'.
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Yes. These all have different meanings to me.
Supper is a meal typically served in the evening, it’s the last meal of the day, but it’s informal.
Dinner is more formal, an afternoon meal with social elements and/or formality. It can be the last meal but doesn’t have to be.
Tea is an afternoon snack, typically served with tea, hence the name. Tea might be skipped if you have an early dinner.
In primary school in the 90s, we'd call lunch dinner (dinner time, dinner money, school dinners) but if you brought your own food it was packed lunch. But at home, we'd say dinner for the evening meal.
They still do that at my kid's school, so he gets two dinners a day. Chaos reigns.
I was so confused when I first heard someone ask "what's for tea?". Uhm, tea I guess, maybe a biscuit??
I'm from the North but I tend to use dinner for the evening meal, rather than tea. Dinner in my mind is the "big" meal of the day.
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Tea is a delicious hot drink, I have a little milk in mine. Breakfast is the first meal of the day after getting up. Lunch is a midday meal. Afternoon tea is a posh cup of tea, with a pot, and some snacks like scones, cakes and finger sandwiches. Dinner is an evening main meal Supper is a late evening snack.
I'm from the north west.
I’m from the middle of the midlands. This is absolutely correct.
Tea. Dinner only used for Sundays or Christmas.
Dinner is the main meal. Lunch/tea is a smaller meal.
Lunch is the main meal. Breakfast is a rushed coffee at best. Dinner is an unenthusiastic munch that takes place anytime between 4-11pm
I've lived in all these regions, I just say food now. Safer that way
Followed by "psspsspsspss" to anyone within earshot
"Dinner," tea is daft, twee and confusing. I'm from + Live in Tea heartlands though
IIRC this is a class divide indicator. The fact that class maps well onto geography is just correlation.
Middle class has breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Working class has breakfast, dinner, and tea.
Supper is an outlier and definitely more unusual. In my experience it usually indicates a smaller evening meal.
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Breakfast Dinner Tea Supper (optional)
My test is what you called the school staff who served your midday meal. Was it a "dinner lady" or "lunch lady"?!
The school thing is a good point. We called hot meals at school dinners, that were served by dinner ladies.
But we also had packed lunches that we ate out of lunchboxes.
Damn you and your logic!!
Annoyingly, lunch is dinner (dinner ladies at school) but also the evening meal is dinner if I haven’t had dinner (lunch) 😂 then it’s tea time.
I grew up saying 'Tea' for the evening meal but changed to 'Dinner' at university - just to fit in.
When talking with my parents though, I still say Tea.
It very much does come down I think to what was historically the main meal of the day - which makes this both a regional divide, and a class divide.
They tried to teach me English in school ~30 years ago. At that moment it was "dinner" for the meal near the midday and "supper" for the evening meal. Breakfast for morning.
Sounded quite logical and convenient.
Having moved from a tea-saying region of England to Northern Ireland, I haven't heard anyone say "tea" around here for an evening meal
Dinner if it's hot, lunch/tea if it's cold, supper if you're in an Enid Blyton story.
This country is obviously in decline, cold tea
Dinner is around 2pm and the biggest meal of the day. Supper is around 7 pm.
I live in the south west and it’s dinner for tea.
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