Apparently some Australian families refer to the midday meal as “dinner” instead of “lunch” which I only learned after hesitantly sitting down for “dinner” at 1pm.
Back in the day, the noon/midday meal was called dinner also in the US. Particularly in rural areas.
And for some of us boomers it’s still dinner. Growing up on a farm, Breakfast was 6am-ish thing after chores were done, (you could sneak in some jelly toast before chores if you weren’t to lazy to get up early enough), the noon dinner, and you always came home to eat it, was a full meal deal because you had spent your morning often doing heavy manual labor. Plus your afternoon was going to be no different. You got lunch a 4pm because supper was a 7pm-ish meal, (often heavy on the “ish” part depending on what went wrong during the afternoon).
We evidently didn’t get the memo about changing dinner to lunch until much, much later. Besides, we would have needed to rename “lunch” to something else for the 4pm break. I still call the noon meal dinner to this day. You can call it whatever you like, because I don’t sweat those details.
My great uncle got embarassed over this early on in his career. His boss invited him to dinner on Saturday and so he showed up with his wife around noon since that was the typical understanding in his home region. The boss thought he was crazy and told him off for arriving hours earlier than expected.
They still call the midday meal dinner and the later one supper, though I say lunch for the middle one and use the words dinner & supper interchangeably.
In my rural midwestern US family, “dinner” meant the largest meal of the day, frequently with our extended family, almost always at my grandparents’ house.
“Sunday dinner” was midday, right after church. This was typically pot roast in the cold months and barbecue in the summer.
On weekdays, dinner was in the evening after everyone came home from work and school. We had a big family dinner at least a couple of times per week when I was a kid. (My grandma and sometimes my great aunts would do the cooking. In hindsight, I think my mom and my uncle struggled financially after their respective divorces, and this was the older generation’s way of helping them out.)
Holiday dinners were usually midday, unless someone had to work and we needed to plan around that.
If we were talking about the meal at a specific time of day, we used “lunch” or “supper,” since “dinner” was ambiguous.
Very common in the UK too. Lunch is dinner, dinner is dinner, dinner is tea, tea is also a specific type of afternoon meal (scones and sandwiches).
Even then, people will just say something like ‘morning tea’ instead of breakfast.
It’s a linguistic war zone.
What the fuck.
Have never heard anyone call lunch anything other than that, unless it is a tradie who might say ‘smoko’ for lunch or a 15 minute snack break.
Aussie terms for meals:
Breakfast/brekkie
Morning tea/smoko*
Lunch (or brunch if its ~9-11am)
Afternoon tea/arvo tea*
Dinner/Tea
Dessert/Sweets*
*morning/arvo tea are primarily for social sit downs and would be like biscuits/scones and a cup of tea/coffee (having a cuppa with friends/family, small meetings with clients, retirees with nothing better to do)
dessert/sweets is if your having something after dinner, like some pie/crumble with ice cream, pancakes, etc)
Also ‘entree’ is a small course before the main meal in dinner, the USA confused the fuck out of me when i visited.
My Aussie friend mainly had problems with remembering our egg doneness “sunny side up” and “over easy”, i’m unsure of what her proper terms were for it.
Yes, an entree is also known as an appetiser, as per the definition of the word ;)
We would say sunny side up here too, but we would probably more commonly just say ‘flipped’.
And i order myne “cooked through” or “flipped and crucified”, because i really prefer theres no runny yolk unless its mi goreng or over steak tartare.
Apparently some Australian families refer to the midday meal as “dinner” instead of “lunch” which I only learned after hesitantly sitting down for “dinner” at 1pm.
Back in the day, the noon/midday meal was called dinner also in the US. Particularly in rural areas. And for some of us boomers it’s still dinner. Growing up on a farm, Breakfast was 6am-ish thing after chores were done, (you could sneak in some jelly toast before chores if you weren’t to lazy to get up early enough), the noon dinner, and you always came home to eat it, was a full meal deal because you had spent your morning often doing heavy manual labor. Plus your afternoon was going to be no different. You got lunch a 4pm because supper was a 7pm-ish meal, (often heavy on the “ish” part depending on what went wrong during the afternoon).
We evidently didn’t get the memo about changing dinner to lunch until much, much later. Besides, we would have needed to rename “lunch” to something else for the 4pm break. I still call the noon meal dinner to this day. You can call it whatever you like, because I don’t sweat those details.
My great uncle got embarassed over this early on in his career. His boss invited him to dinner on Saturday and so he showed up with his wife around noon since that was the typical understanding in his home region. The boss thought he was crazy and told him off for arriving hours earlier than expected.
They still call the midday meal dinner and the later one supper, though I say lunch for the middle one and use the words dinner & supper interchangeably.
In my rural midwestern US family, “dinner” meant the largest meal of the day, frequently with our extended family, almost always at my grandparents’ house.
“Sunday dinner” was midday, right after church. This was typically pot roast in the cold months and barbecue in the summer.
On weekdays, dinner was in the evening after everyone came home from work and school. We had a big family dinner at least a couple of times per week when I was a kid. (My grandma and sometimes my great aunts would do the cooking. In hindsight, I think my mom and my uncle struggled financially after their respective divorces, and this was the older generation’s way of helping them out.)
Holiday dinners were usually midday, unless someone had to work and we needed to plan around that.
If we were talking about the meal at a specific time of day, we used “lunch” or “supper,” since “dinner” was ambiguous.
Very common in the UK too. Lunch is dinner, dinner is dinner, dinner is tea, tea is also a specific type of afternoon meal (scones and sandwiches).
Even then, people will just say something like ‘morning tea’ instead of breakfast.
It’s a linguistic war zone.
And if you want actual tea, you ask for a ‘cuppa’
Or a brew in the North.
What the fuck.
Have never heard anyone call lunch anything other than that, unless it is a tradie who might say ‘smoko’ for lunch or a 15 minute snack break.
Aussie terms for meals:
Breakfast/brekkie
Morning tea/smoko*
Lunch (or brunch if its ~9-11am)
Afternoon tea/arvo tea*
Dinner/Tea
Dessert/Sweets*
*morning/arvo tea are primarily for social sit downs and would be like biscuits/scones and a cup of tea/coffee (having a cuppa with friends/family, small meetings with clients, retirees with nothing better to do)
Also ‘entree’ is a small course before the main meal in dinner, the USA confused the fuck out of me when i visited.
Apparently, your entrées are our appetizers :)
My Aussie friend mainly had problems with remembering our egg doneness “sunny side up” and “over easy”, i’m unsure of what her proper terms were for it.
Yes, an entree is also known as an appetiser, as per the definition of the word ;)
We would say sunny side up here too, but we would probably more commonly just say ‘flipped’.
And i order myne “cooked through” or “flipped and crucified”, because i really prefer theres no runny yolk unless its mi goreng or over steak tartare.
I think they call it supper right? I believe this was an American South thing too
Supper = dinner in The South
And Midwest many places