Some people in Britain and Australia refer to their main evening meal as "tea" rather than "dinner" or "supper", but generally, with the exception of Scotland and Northern England, "tea" refers to a light meal or a snack.
Chow. Meaning: (Noun) Chow is an informal term for a meal used in certain English-speaking countries. It is often used in Australia as slang for dinner.
Australian families usually have dinner between 6 and 7pm, but I see older people having dinner as early as 5pm and young busy professionals can have dinner as late as 8 or 9pm.
In most parts of the United States and Canada today, "supper" and "dinner" are considered synonyms (although supper is a more antiquated term). In Saskatchewan, and much of Atlantic Canada, "supper" means the main meal of the day, usually served in the late afternoon, while "dinner" is served around noon.
Across England as a whole, the majority (57%) call it “dinner”, while just over a third (36%) opt for “tea”. The remainder either call it something else (including 5% who say “supper”) or answered “don't know”.
"Supper" became "dinner" because evenings became the only time working class families were able to gather for a meal. In this day and age when someone invites you over to eat, you can safely assume that "lunch" means midday and "dinner" means to arrive in the evening.
Merriam-Webster establishes dinner as "the principal meal of the day." Supper, on the other hand, has three definitions: The evening meal when dinner is taken at mid-day. A light meal served late in the evening. An evening social especially for raising funds.
What Time Is Supper? Supper is always an evening meal. The specific hour of the evening depends on when you're feeling hungry and how late you stay up! You could have an early supper at 5pm or a late supper at 10pm.
Today, you might notice that the term “supper” is more commonly used in Southern and Midwestern states, probably due to those regions having a greater reliance on agriculture than Northern states and thus having more ancestors who were farmers.
In America, the industrial revolution was slower to catch on. Especially in the Southern and Midwestern states, which remained largely agricultural, dinner was still served at noon and supper in the evenings until the middle of the 20th century. However, by the 1950s, dinner moved to the evening.
Australian slang for dinner is tea. This is by far the most common slang way to refer to dinner, and virtually any Australian will know what you mean when you say tea. That said, there are a number of other slang terms which might be applied to dinner, such as blowout, chow, nosh-up, or repast.
Roast lamb has been declared Australia's national dish in a major poll that shows we're still a country of meat eaters at heart. The poll, held on News Ltd websites across all mainland capitals, attracted more than 24,000 votes.
Contributor's comments: In Tasmania 'dinner' is usually the meal (or snack) eaten in the middle of the day; though, if the midday meal is a snack it may be referred to as 'lunch', especially by school children, ie it's lunch-time. 'Tea' is the evening meal.
Brekky: the first and most important meal of the day, Aussies call breakfast 'brekky'.
“Arvo” directly translates to “afternoon”. You may hear people say “This arvo I'm going to surf,” or ask you “What are your plans this arvo?”
More recent data from Google Ngram suggest that use of the word supper began declining in the beginning of the 1900s, while the use of lunch has been increasing. Southern and Midwestern states tend to have a higher usage of supper, perhaps reflecting their agrarian roots.
Dinner was originally used to indicate the main meal of the day, while supper referred to a lighter meal eaten later. Today, dinner refers to the evening meal, while supper may refer to lighter or more informal meals.
Dinner is the main meal of the day, served either in the evening or at midday. However, in certain regions of the U.S. (New England in particular), the words are used interchangeably, though, supper is the less formal term. Dinner is the chief meal of the day no matter what time it's served.
In America, the average dinner time is 6:22 p.m. Some folks choose to eat well after 9 p.m. Dorothy Bain, a 63-year-old retired nurse in Laurinburg, North Carolina, sometimes cooks steak for dinner, sometimes chicken. What's constant is when she eats dinner—always between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m.
As it turns out, one in four of us think that the only people who use the word supper are posh people. Aside from dinner and supper, another obvious name for our last meal of the day is “tea”. In fact, four in ten of us call it tea, and it turns out that we have assumptions about people who use that word, too.
A typical Aussie barbecue is with sausages, burgers, steak, fresh seafood, bread and tomato or barbecue sauce, they sometimes include salad but it's mainly about the meat and fish (and of course a few stubbies – that's beer to the non-Australians). Australians will literally have a barbeque anywhere, not just at home.
Some people in Britain and Australia refer to their main evening meal as "tea" rather than "dinner" or "supper", but generally, with the exception of Scotland and Northern England, "tea" refers to a light meal or a snack.