When I was growing up in urban Saskatchewan, we often referred to the midday meal as dinner and the evening meal as supper. It seems now that whenever I use the term dinner, everywhere I go people ask me “Do you mean lunch”. Is this usage no longer common in Canada?
Lunch and Dinner
Since you grew up in Saskatchewan, you are probably used to urban versus rural. This is an extension of that.
“Dinner” is the primary meal of the day. This can be taken at midday or in the evening – farmers usually took it at midday, cityfolk in the evening. Supper is what you have in the evening if you had dinner midday, and lunch is what you have midday if your dinner is in the evening.
If anything, the usage of the words is simply becoming more consistent with our actual behaviours. Our family (the farming side) still takes Dinner around 3:00 on special occasions (Xmas).
For me, despite my British parents, dinner and supper mean the same thing and lunch is something different. However, my wife is not of British parents and so supper is somewhat foreign to her so she would tend to use dinner.
Lunch=midday, dinner/supper=evening
Growing up I always considered Supper or Dinner to be the meal eaten in the evening however, one day I realized my Dad would always call Lunch, “Dinner”, which to me seemed ridiculous. Now I’m used to it, but I’ve always assumed it was just a Raymond thing.
My brother in law says that 12midday is dinner and later on its tea time – but i disagree…its lunch and then dinner. However at school when it was time for lunch, the ladies in the canteen were called dinner ladies??? Confusing…i think so!