Supper vs Dinner

[Utah Bob #35998]

Which comes first?

[Red Gauntlet , SASS 60619]

When I was a kid, Sunday dinner was after church, maybe at 1 pm or so. So for 'supper' we had a sandwich and soup or such; light fare, in the evening.

 

Other than that, it was always 'dinner' here, not 'supper'.

 

Most of my friends also had Sunday dinner in the afternoon. Then, one day, it seems like the custom just vanished....

[Utah Bob #35998]

I missed first breakfast and had just finished afternoon tea…okay wine. 

[Alpo]

The way it was when I grew up, supper was what you ate at your house with your family. Dinner was eaten at a restaurant or at someone else's house with non family members.

 

Mama and Daddy and my brothers and I would sit down to supper. But I would take Susie out to dinner. We didn't go out to supper, we went out to dinner. Or Bob might invite me to his house for dinner.

 

So supper would be en familee, well dinner would be with someone else or at someplace else.

[Charlie MacNeil, SASS #48580]

My great grandad, and several old cowboys I’ve known, called lunch either “noon dinner” or just “dinner”. The evening meal was called supper.

[Pat Riot]

Growing up at my house dinner was lunch and the evening meal was supper. My Mom was from West Virginia and my Dad from SW Pennsylvania. 
 

I learned the “proper”descriptions in the Navy. 

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

Either but it was the evening meal.

[Blackwater 53393]

1 hour ago, Utah Bob #35998 said:

I missed first breakfast and had just finished afternoon tea…okay wine. 

Ya’ fergot “Tuck In”- 11:00 pm and “After Midnight” between 1:30 and 4:00 am!!  Tolkein never mentioned those, but having been surrounded by hobbits for most of my life, I can attest to their existence.  

[Blackwater 53393]

We had Sunday Dinner, out or with guests. It was after noon.

 

The evening meal is “supper” as are meals for fund raisers for church, school, or charities.

 

Dinner is a more or less formal affair where etiquette and grace are required. Whether it’s just an evening out with friends or a dress up event for “awards/politics”.

 

That’s the way both sides of my family, the yankees or the southerners, observed mealtime.

[Warden Callaway]

Call me anything but don't call me late for supper. 

 

Always been dinner at noon,  supper in evening.  Until Yankees invaded. 

[Larsen E. Pettifogger, SASS #32933]

The only way to keep my weight some what in control is to eat once a day at 2:00 pm.  I call it Linner.  It covers lunch and dinner and I feel fine.

[Tennessee Snuffy]

Dinner is at noon.  How many of you carried a "dinner bucket" (which could be a molasses bucket, a tin bucket with a thermos or a sack of sandwiches ) with you each day your went to work to eat at noon?

[Crooked River Pete, SASS 43485]

I read once that dinner was the largest meal of the day and supper was the last meal of the day.

[Larsen E. Pettifogger, SASS #32933]

I carried a LUNCH bucket.  Never heard it called a dinner bucket.  One thing I do know is that breakfast is not the most important meal of the day.  That was invented by Dr. Kellogg when he ran a health spa before he went into the cereral business and carried the phrase over to the cereral market.

[LawMan Mark, SASS #57095L]

Lunch is a mid day meal.

 

Supper is an evening or night meal.

 

Dinner can be at either time, but consists of more dishes, and more elaborate service.

[Cowboy Small]

For our family 

 

Lunch was about noon

 

Supper was in the evening 

 

Dinner was the bigger of the two If'n there was a bigger one.

[Red Gauntlet , SASS 60619]

These days (and for decades), for us, it's breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Both breakfast and lunch are casual. Dinner is always sit-down, whether it's the bride and me, or the larger family. My kids and grandkids reside close, we have lots of dinners together.

 

There's no confusion. Dinner is the sit-down evening meal, no matter who is in attendance. Inasmuch as we have a larger family dinner 2-3 times per week, it's easy to maintain the distinction.

 

Supper as such we haven't had for a long, long time. As I said before, for us it was a light evening meal on Sunday, because on that day, and that day only, dinner was in the early afternoon.

 

I think this was because most people went to church, stores were closed on Sunday, so the mid-day ritual was natural. Gone with the wind...

[Lawdog Dago Dom]

Once you work third shift, you find out you can eat any food at any hour of the day and it does not seem odd.

[Springfield Slim SASS #24733]

My grandfather on my mother's side, a potato farmer in Maine, said Dinner is when you take your noon break, and supper is what you eat when you are all done farming for the day, usually left-overs from Dinner. He said Lunch is for city folks.

[Cowtown Scout, SASS #53540 L]

My brother is always referring to second breakfast, now I know where he got it from!

[Buckshot Bob]

Nobody does Sunday brunch 

[Waxahachie Kid #17017 L]

Around these parts...

Dinner = meal at noon +/-.

Supper = Evening meal.

 

In the Bible, it was the last supper, not the last dinner. 

 

"Supper time, and the livin' is easy.

The fish are jumpin', and the cotton is high. 

Oh, your daddy's rich, and your ma is good lookin'.

So, hush little baby, don't you cry."  

 

[watab kid]

on the farm , it was breakfast , lunch , dinner , then supper 

[Alpo]

28 minutes ago, Waxahachie Kid #17017 L said:

Supper time, and the livin' is easy.

Don't know whether you were making a funny or not, but the song is summertime.

[Forty Rod SASS 3935]

First  meal of the day: "breakfast".

 

Second meal of the day: "lunch" if informal, and at work or in a cafe.

          "dinner" a sit down with place settings of some sort on Sundays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, other holidays, birthdays and special occasions like weddings and after funerals, etc.

 

Third meal of the day: "supper" if we sat down at the table.

          "a bite" or a "snack" if we missed supper or when ever we raided the fridge. 

[Red Gauntlet , SASS 60619]

Interesting customs in different places. In my family (6 kids) other than the 'Sunday dinner' thing in the early afternoon, we always had a sit-down dinner when our dad got home at 6 pm. This is the 1950s & '60s. City life, in our case.

 

In my own (5 kids), same thing. Dinner at the dinner table every night about 6 o'clock, with only rare exceptions. Saturday was different; less 'formal'. My wife and I still do the same. We're lucky in that many of our kids and many of our 12 grandkids are within a mile or two, and we nowadays have larger family evening dinners about 3 times per week, rotating households. Sometimes six or seven, sometimes 15, at the table, etc, depending, at any one time. 

[Marshal Dan Troop 70448]

Growing up, it was always Breakfast, Lunch, and supper. Only on Sundays did we have a "Dinner" and it was after church. The exceptions were Thanksgiving and Christmas in which we also had dinners, but they were also after church.

 

I never had a Dinner hour in school, it was always lunch, same were I was employed. We had a Lunch break or we went out to lunch with a client or co-worker or the boss treated us to lunch.

[Rye Miles #13621]

Supper was every night, Dinner was on Sunday about 1:00

Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving were also dinner,

[Waxahachie Kid #17017 L]

9 hours ago, Alpo said:

Don't know whether you were making a funny or not, but the song is summertime.

Uh...yes, I was making a "funny", since the lyrics included the word "supper time", which was loosely the subject of the original post here.

Yes, the song is "Summertime", composed in 1934, by George Gershwin, for his opera "Porgy and Bess". However, the lyrics are by DuBose Heyward, the author of the novel "Porgy", upon which the opera was based. However, the song is said to be co-credited by Gershwin, by some. 

[Fort Reno Kid]

Howdy Pards

 

Love reading these replies. Brings back happy memories of long-past childhood when sitting down to dinner or supper (take your choice) was a regular family thing. Was all the more special when it involved multi-generation family members and friends.

 

Keep on the sunny side.

 

Adios 

 

Fort Reno Kid 

 

 

 

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

9 hours ago, Waxahachie Kid #17017 L said:

 

In the Bible, it was the last supper, not the last dinner. 

 

But the Bible is a translation influenced by the culture of the writers, both the authors and the translators and the retranslators. What was it in the original Greek or Aramaic?

[Alpo]

47 minutes ago, Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984 said:

What was it in the original Greek or Aramaic

Seder

[ShadowCatcher]

17 hours ago, Utah Bob #35998 said:

Which comes first?

Interchangeable.  They come after lunch.

 

"Hey kid's, it's supper time!"

 

"What's for dinner?"

 

"Two choices: take it or leave it!"

[irish ike, SASS #43615]

Both my parents were raised on small farms. The tradition was breakfast, lunch, (which is the biggest meal of the day), and then supper.

They adjusted the meal sizes for modern living but the evening meal was always, 'whats for supper'?

[Birdgun Quail, SASS #63663]

When I grew up, there was Breakfast, Lunch, and Supper.  Dinner was the biggest meal of the day; usually at Lunch or Supper.  
 

“Mom, when are we having dinner?”

”At supper.”