Scotland -- Day Six (On meals and common language)

Tea . . . dinner . . . supper . . .

Meanings vary depending on where you are. . . and who you are . . . or when you’re saying it.  Context matters, as the terms and their usage vary even with the same person from time to time.

Me at (I think) tea (lunch or dinner)
at Rozelle House.  Quite tasty.

When Liz wants to ask me what I’d like to eat for the evening main meal, she may ask me what I want for dinner, but she’ll usually ask what I want for tea; although if I don’t know it, she may be asking me what I want for lunch (dinner) or mid-afternoon snack (tea) or if I want to go out to a nice place for (high) tea and have a light supper (late-night snack) later.  

“Supper”* is defined as a light evening meal or late-night dinner (the only thing everyone agrees on the world over, as far as I can tell, is that if there are both a dinner and a supper, supper comes after).

“Dinner”* is defined as the main meal of the day, regardless of the time when it is served, or else as a formal evening meal.  In the southern United States, however, if you’re invited to dinner, you’re being invited to lunch, but it will definitely be the main (and perhaps only, depending on your stamina) meal of your day, as in “Pastor, will you join us for dinner after church?”, to which I, at least, almost always say, “Yes, thank you very much.”  (If you’ve ever wondered why pastors tend to be a chubby lot, here’s your answer – the kindness and talent of the culinary offerer kill us softly, to borrow from Roberta Flack.)

“Tea”* means a light late morning or mid-afternoon meal or snack or the main evening meal, at least in the United Kingdom.  In the US, tea persists in meaning something we drink, warm or (shockingly) cold.

This evening, when everyone in the family comes home and we gather round the table, it will, I suspect, be a combination of tea, dinner and supper – but whatever we variously call the moment, bread will be broken and community will happen.

Bon appetit!


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*According to Wikipedia, who else?  But when it comes to tea, the matter is made even more cloudy by Wikipedia’s mode of distinguishing between words, persons or ideas who have a number of different meanings or contexts: the disambiguation entry.  Thus the main entry for “tea” will be found simply under “tea” (as in the loose leaves that grow around the world to supply the beverage-thirsting masses of humans with the various flavors we so appreciate), while the concept of tea as a meal will be found under “tea (disambiguation)”.  Really?  Disambiguation?  I should apparently know that “disambiguation” (meaning to make un- or not ambiguous) in Wiki-speak means “everything else”, as in “Any other meaning or context you’re looking for may be found in our disambiguation category.”  Like the UK and the US, Wikipedia and I are separated by our common language.  See Everything You Know About English is Wrong for a humorous discussion of the various persons to whom the "common language" reference has been (at least according to the author) misattributed.