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it is my belief that many Southern customs are actually English/Irish/Scottish in origin.
I am a mutt of all of those
my family came to this country and settled in NC and GA
this is one of the reasons why I started this thread..I honestly didn't know if supper was a southern word or not..I can now say that it is not
Maybe one of the reason why I don't say it, is b/c I grew up in a time where Charlotte was starting to really grow as a city..maybe many of the people that moved here didn't say it..maybe that's why. I vaguely remember when downtown Charlotte had 4 tall buildings...now look at us!!!
I use the two words somewhat interchangeably, but I grew up eating supper in the evening, and unless it's a formal occasion or a meal out at a restaurant somewhere, I still consider the last meal of the day to be supper. When we have guests for a meal, I usually refer to it as dinner, unless we're eating pizza in the living room while watching a movie, and when we make a big holiday meal, I refer to that as dinner, no matter what time of day it is served.
But when it is just my spouse and me sitting together at the kitchen table of an evening, breaking bread together and chatting about how our respective days went, we are supping together.
The origin of the word "sup" is from the Middle English "soupen," which in turn is derived from the Old French word "souper." The verb form means "to eat or drink something," and the noun means "a small swallow of mouthful of food, usually liquid such as soup."
The word "dinner" also originates from Middle English and Old French, but just to confuse everyone, it originally meant the first meal of the day, which we now call breakfast. The Old French term was "disner," which in turn originated in the Vulgar Latin word meaning "to break one's fast."
And now you know a whole lot more about the etymology of both terms than you ever wanted to!
My mom said they called the midday meal "dinner" until the schools started calling it "lunch." Darn, schools and their influence.
We don't need no education. We don't need no thought control.
No dark sarcasm in the classroom.
Teachers leave those kids alone! Hey! teachers! Leave those kids alone!
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In Australia it's breakfast, lunch, with the main evening meal either being dinner or tea. Confusingly like in Britain tea can also be just afternoon tea or any occasion when you drink tea and eat cakes and biscuits. To my knowledge lunch has never been called dinner here - that sounds plain weird. Supper is only occasionally used, and more often for a late night meal.
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