Up North

[Kirki]

Why do people from up north call lunch dinner?

[Quizmonster]

It is not entirely a northern thing.One cannot hope to explain the differences between lunch and dinner better than simply by quoting what The Oxford English Dictionary says about 'dinner'...

    "The chief meal of the day, eaten originally and still by the majority of people about the middle of the day, but now, by the professional and fashionable classes, usually in the evening."

It is clear, therefore, that it is a matter entirely of class and - only to some extent - geography.

[Chinajan]

Indeed.

And if dinner is eaten in the evening why are school dinner ladies so called? Should they be 'ladies who lunch'?

[ineedahobby]

oooh cant call them dinner ladies round here its all gone mad..they now have to be referred to as lunchtime supervisors!

[Gnu]

Because dinner is tea.

[jno]

Is it really true QM that most people still have their main meal in the middle of the day? How old is your OED? (Non-rhetorical questions, I'm interested.)

[CheekyChops]

I'm northern and at c12:30pm I have my dinner.  Later, at about 6:00pm, I have my tea - which is the main meal of my day.

Although saying that I still eat my 'dinner' at work during my 'lunch' hour!

[Quizmonster]

Jno, I clearly cannot vouch for people's current eating habits, so I've no idea what proportion of the populace have dinner at 1 pm as opposed to 8 pm. However, I'm fairly sure that most people north of a line drawn from the Severn to the Wash, say, still have 'dinner' at what I call 'lunchtime', but I could be wrong. What I can say at a personal level is that, if someone says to me: "We must have you round for dinner again soon", I don't expect to be leaving the house at noon on the day!
I have the Second Edition of TOED, first published in 1989. If that seems somewhat dated, I have to tell you that OED Online says - word for word - precisely what OED2 says about 'dinner', as outlined earlier.

[jno]

thanks QM - I was brought up to have a main meal at midday and call it dinner, and a smaller meal in the evening called tea; and I often still do (I work in the evenings and the canteen is not to be visited by sensitive souls, so I eat before I go). But I would call the midday meal lunch, whatever it consisted of, and midday is emphatically lunchtime, even if I'm not eating anything at all. Do northerners not recognise the word 'lunchtime'? Is midday 'dinnertime' to them?

[Grunty]

Surely the correct question is "Why do some people call their dinner lunch".

[spudqueen]

Couldn't agree more Grunty.

[Quizmonster]

For exactly the same reason, Grunty and Spudqueen, as I outlined in the opening answer on this thread...it is nowadays a 'class' thing, by and large.
Both 'lunch' and 'luncheon' - the latter of which is now used only for the most formal of occasions - date back to the 1500s. They are probably based on the Spanish word 'lonja', meaning a slice, especially of ham. That would suggest that...even 'way back then...it meant a light meal such as the upper classes might partake of as opposed to the hefty one indulged in by the lower orders. Over the centuries, the two words have gone to and fro between being fashionable or merely pretentious. It's up to you to decide which phase they are in at the moment!

[Haggisdj]

Everyone I know refers to 17:00 - 18:00 as around tea-time...

[racker]

because we dont know any different

so is it lunch or dinner please tell me the difference

[Kenzo]

my friends got a book about class and apparently upper class people find it lower class to say 'dinner'. 'pardon' is another one.

[schmeeges]

In Australia, we have lunch at lunch time [two words] (daytime), and tea at teatime [one word] (when it's dark), unless we go out, then it's dinner - you don't go to a restaurant to have tea, (unless it's just to the pub) - if in a restaurant, it's always dinner, [ ie, 'let's go out for dinner'] or if you have people over, they come for dinner (at night), not tea, although in summer, one usually invites friends over for a 'barbie' / 'bbq' rather than for tea or dinner, and that can be any time from about 11 am onwards!