Wednesday, 13 April 2011

The difference between dinner and supper

My dear readers.

I have something to share with the group: the words 'dinner' and 'supper' are the bane of my life.

Last week I saw a conference plan which showed, in English, that people will be served 'lunch' at 1pm, and 'supper' at 7pm.  I assumed that the meal at 1pm would be small and after a journey more would be needed.

I occasionally do seminars in German and English, where I translate the words 'Mittagessen' and 'Abendessen' to 'dinner' and 'supper' respectively.  Every time, there is one person (usually my colleague) who wonders whether I am using the right words.

I mean, what would I know about the English language?  It's only my first language.

In conversations with my clients we often come to this point.

Therefore to save me having to tell my clients over and over again I shall explain the difference between dinner and supper.

(Not particularly relevant, but I wanted to add some colour to this page.)


Dinner is the main meal of the day.  It tends to be warm.  In summer when it's really hot it may be cold (like some salad or gazpacho soup or something).  It can, and this is crucial, be eaten at different times of the day.  Unlike words like 'Abendessen' or 'kolacja', this dinner can be eaten at different times of the day.

Bear in mind, that most people (said I very unscientifically) will want to have one main meal per day.  At least one, anyway.  That meal will be substantial.  It will fill you.  That meal is dinner.


Supper can only be eaten in the evening.  It can be anything: A hot warm meal, a sandwich with some fruit, some soup, a packet of crisps with a cake; the German Abendbrot (or Polish kolacja) whereby one is given bread, cheese and various salads (with fish if you are lucky).

So everyone has supper each day?

No.  Let me explain.


Lunch can only be eaten in the afternoon.  It can be anything: A hot warm meal, a sandwich with some fruit, some soup, a packet of crisps and a cake.

So, remembering that the main meal of the day is called dinner; if you have your main meal at about 1pm, the it is dinner.  The meal that you have in the evening is supper.

If your main meal is in the evening, then the meal in the afternoon is lunch, and in the evening, dinner.

To complicate things, you may even (as I did as a child) have lunch, dinner and supper.  That meant, for me, a packed lunch (notice that the word lunch is used here to mean something smallish and cold), dinner when I got home, and a little snack in the latish evening, that was supper.

Now, I shall bring you to a place that, in my experience, no non-British people find mystifying, the issue of classFirst of all, it is said that working-class people use the word 'tea' to mean 'dinner', i.e. the main meal of the day.  * Bear in mind that tea can also mean a cup of tea, a time in the mid-afternoon where one drinks tea or coffee (hence my translation of the word Kaffeepause to be 'mid-afternoon tea' when it is in the afternoon), or what I have just labelled as dinner.

You see, this very excellent site contains contributions that agree with what I just typed, hence me calling it very excellent ;)  It also however contains the following comment:

1. Breakfast, dinner, tea  = 'working class', with 'dinner' used even if the midday meal was only something light (a sandwich, etc), and 'tea' used even if it was a heavy meal.

2. Breakfast, lunch, dinner  = 'lower/middle middle class'.

3. Breakfast, lunch, supper =  'upper middle' or 'upper class', with 'dinner' reserved for formal evening meals, and 'tea' for a light meal of sandwiches etc at 4ish.

Now, I more or less come from a working class background (of course, many say that the class system doesn't exist anymore.  That may be true with regards to income or work, but I believe the cultural groupings to still exist) and I always said that I had lunch (a small cold or largish warm meal at 1230pm), dinner (on coming back from school/work) and supper (something smallish at about 9pm).  When I started working in places where food was provided for guests and myself, we had warm meals: dinner at 1pm and supper at 7pm.

Does this make me middle class?  I would say not, I was seemingly brought up by (get ready for this, confused non-British people) someone from a working class background with parents who were working class but with middle class aspirations (i.e. and this is something non-Brits don't tend to know, the language that one uses denotes not just ones own class, but also how one wants to be.  I am not sure whether the concept of 'talking posh' is being taught in the rest of Europe.)

Therefore, even with people from GB, you may meet people who speak of 'lunch' and 'dinner', rather than my system.  To tell the truth, I don't know people who do this.  Of course, being working class means that I don't know many middle class people, but I have known a fair few, and they used the words I used.  I put this down to the uniformisation of the English language in GB.

What if I have two big meals of the same size twice a day?

This happens.  Like when I worked in places that served food.  It's simple, you call them 'dinner' and 'supper'.

However, the meal that is slightly bigger is dinner.  Perhaps you had, for example, pasta with tomato sauce twice in one day.  However, in the afternoon you had a salad before it and a dessert afterwards.  That would make that to be dinner.

Another difference is whether the meal has a sense of occasion.  The meal with more of an occasion tends to be dinner.  When I say occasion, I mean things like people sat down together at a table; maybe there are candles, maybe wine with it.  This sounds like the 'upper class' formal meal, i.e. dinner.  However, I daresay that you do this at times.  Perhaps you (in Poland) go to a Bar Mleczny for something like barszcz, potatoes and spinach in the afternoon; then in the evening you have a meal at home with friends or partner, a meal which is the same size, but with more of a a sense of an occasion (i.e. as much as I love Bar Mleczny, things like plastic trays take away the sense of occasion.)  Therefore, that would be lunch and then dinner.

There is no hard and fast rule for this.  During my honeymoon last year my wife and I had pasta with vegetables, with some red wine and some tiramisu in a restaurant in Milan.  Later, in the house where we were staying, we were given a paella with fresh mussels, with tons of red wine and, the football was on.  Being in a restaurant tends to be an occasion, but the later was more of an occasion as we were with friends, and the football was on.  Therefore I would call the meals lunch and dinner.

So what about brunch?

That's easy.  The word 'brunch' is combination of the words breakfast and lunch; therefore the meal is a mixture of the two, i.e. one eats more than one would usually eat for either breakfast or lunch.  Also, one can have things like cake, as one can have cake for lunch but not dinner.
Brunch is always eaten late (say, from 11am), and is the first meal of the day (unless one had a snack beforehand).

Anything else?

So, I've mentioned breakfast, brunch, aha, there  can be a mid-morning snack, also called mid-morning tea, which tends to involve tea, maybe with a small cake or fruit.
Then lunch or dinner.  Afterwards perhaps mid-afternoon tea, also called tea.  Then, supper, dinner or tea (all can involve the same food; the word used is dependent on the context of what one ate earlier or what class one belongs to).  Possibly, then supper.  Also, and this is largely for children I think, midnight feast.  Which is always cold and tends to involve snack food.  Or *ahem* one can have warm food, food that is reheated leftovers from the previous meal(s).

Context is everything

Americans may see this differently.  I think my problem is that I know Germans who speak American-English and therefore are surprised when I use English as I know it.  I won't get into that, except to say that some Brits really don't like what they see as an 'Americanisation' of GB, so may get uppity.
Not me, no.

Right, that's it.  I'm hungry after typing all that!

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