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.
To me it’s more a class thing - dinner is the biggest meai, which for workers and students was provided by the canteen in the middle of the day, while intellectuals preferred to discuss over dinner at home in the evening. When I was younger, posh people had lunch(eon), while others had dinner, and at least in the north of england the after-work meal at around 6pm was called ‘tea’ - which for posher people meant cakes at 4pm. Another variant for the evening is supper - also from french souper. By the way, in french it’s dejeuner that literally translates as break the fast (the small variant petit-d being modern breakfast).
Cakes at 4 is high tea, tea is still around 6. Or so I’m told. On this side of the bond tea is only a drink.
Germans, being too efficient for that kind of nonsense, instead say “early piece” for breakfast, “midday food” for lunch, and “evening food” for dinner/supper. 😁
Yes and we native speakers of German have no idea why other languages don’t do this. “Morning meal”, “midday meal” and “evening meal” would work very well in English, why do we have to remember 3 extra words for those things…
Portuguese got something similar:
So, Latin had the verb ieiento, ieientare “I breakfast, to breakfast”. In Late Latin times it lost the first ie- due to deduplication (
haplogyhaplology), eventually becoming *iantare “to lunch”. Nowadays it’s “jantar” /ʒã.'ta(ɾ)/ or “janta” /'ʒã.ta/, and it refers to dinner.The Latin word for dinner (cena) got inherited as ceia. It’s uncommon-ish but still understood; some take it as a synonym, some for a post-dinner meal (for example, the light soup some drink right before going to bed, or that past-midnight Christmas feast).
Then you got “almoço” for lunch. It’s from the Latin verb admordeo “I bite into”. I feel like it originally meant something you snack on. In the meantime, English lunch got borrowed as lanche, and it refers to a light snack (usually late afternoon).
Then for breakfast… well. It’s a mess:
- desjejum - re-coined equivalent of disiuno. But it isn’t directly inherited, the later would be *dejunho or similar. Kind of an uncommon word nowadays.
- café da manhã “morning coffee”.
- pequeno almoço “little lunch”. Likely calqued from French.
- mata-bicho “bug/beast-killer”. Yup. I think the underlying analogy is between your morning hunger and a critter, then you plop the breakfast to “kill” the critter.
In Romand dialect of French, spoken in Switzerland, Dinner means lunch, and souper means dinner.
In Swedish ”middag” is the main meal of the day, often eaten in the evening these days. Literally translated it could mean ”middle of the day”. It drives me crazy. Though I learned there’s also ”kvällsmat”, evening food.
Same in Norwegian. Already traumatized of getting it mixed. e.e"
In blue collar Appalachia, it often still means the midday meal while “supper” is the evening.
This was my experience living in rural southern Appalachia. If someone wanted to meet me after dinner, they meant early afternoon, not evening.
West Midlanders in the UK, or at least Brummies, often use dinner for the midday meal which led to confusing conversations with my colleage from Cannock more than a few times.
Yeah my spouse is from Nottinghamshire, I’ve heard that from her family too
That’s what it was for me growing up as well, Irish Canadian
I’ve noticed there are a few similarities, lots of holdovers from Scottish and Irish immigrants i reckon
Dinner is the largest meal of the day. Supper is the evening meal regardless.
Right sunday dinner is lunch time. work days it is supper. Holidays they say what time dinner is.
This is what I was taught growing up.
Also not true etymology, or in some places of the English speaking world still
In the UK dinner is still typically the lunch meal, and evening meal is called tea.
Midlander here. Dinner is the “main meal” whenever it’s eaten. Tea is always the evening meal and lunch is always the midday meal though.
Not across all of the UK, definitely not here in the south, Me and a fellow midlander once spent a week trying to explain dinner = midday/tea = evening to someone at work, I think they’re still confused.
I saw the title of the post and my first thought was all of those options are still true in the UK depending on where you ask, lol.
Latin is “disiūnō”? Interesting - in Spanish, “desayuno” is the first meal if the day *-*
Spanish likely re-coined the expression (otherwise it would be *dejunar), but the comparison is accurate - etymologically the parts are the same:
- “iuno” - deduplicated form of “ieiuno” (I fast, I go without eating). Spanish inherited the later as “ayunar”.
- “dis-” - inherited as “des-”.
Morning, midday or evening the time of day doesn’t matter it is where that person is on their own schedule. If they are working nights then breakfast is an evening meal and dinner could be 5am.
