What do you call the meals of the day in your dialect?
<<Maybe most Americans and Europeans speak English?>>
Speaking about Europe, there are the native Anglophones who live in countries where English is the official language and / or the lingua franca (UK and Ireland, and that's about all).
There are the northern countries of Western Europe, where the language is spoken by at least 70% of the inhabitants.
But then, there are all the other countries, let's say *most* European countries whose inhabitants can only have basic conversations in English, because they simply don't need to use it on a daily basis and / or don't care to learn it better.
Also, food habits are very different in each Western country.
You're welcome, Chinese. I think you're right. Anything we eat between lunch and supper or dinner is simply called a snack.
By the way brunch at restaurants and hotels are often served buffet-style and are almost always served these days, with a drink called Mimosas. They are a mixture of orange juice and Champagne. Quite good!
the first meal of the day (morning) = breakfast
a midday meal (weekdays) = lunch
an evening meal (weekdays) = dinner
a large, formal meal (weekend) = as above depending in the time of day
a mid-morning or midday first meal (weekends) = breakfast
a meal midway through an evening work shift = dinner
a late afternoon quick meal = lunch
Basically the first meal of the day is breakfast, the second lunch and the last dinner. Whether it's a weekday or weekend, it's large or small, it's formal or informal or I'm working or not doesn't matter. Also "tea" is a synonym for "dinner" in my dialect (though I don't use it as much as I once did). Sometimes I call lunch "dinner" too but only when the context makes it clear that I mean lunch.
<<Midday meal - Dinner (but midday meals are not commom in England)>> ?? I don't know many people who don't have a mid-day meal in England.
<<4pm or 5 pm meal - Tea.>> ?? Are you still at school?
A lot of people in NW of England say Breakfast, dinner and tea, I personally tend to say Lunch in preference as "dinner" can be confusing as it can also be an evening meal. I think historically "dinner" was the word used for largest meal of the day which tended, at one time, to be mid-day. Often in modern society, people eat their largest meal in the evening.
I lived in the English East Midlands at one time. People there tend to say breakfast, dinner and supper. Incidentally, I remember a Jack Daniels radio commercial which taked about how in that part of Tennessee people also had breakfast, dinner and supper.
More on meals.
I have a friend who grew up on a farm in Missouri. She called the midday meal, dinner. It was quite a big meal as was the morning meal. The dinner, midday, was more often than not fried chicken, mashed potaoes and a vegetable.
Since they farmed, the early meals were more important than the evening meals, because those were the hours in which they needed their strength. In the cities, like Boston, where people usually worked in either offices or factories or such, the evening meal was the heaviest meal because you had to sacrifice your human needs to the company, during the day.
My grandmother, who grew up on a farm in Ireland, experienced a similar meal schedule to those of the rural US. It's probably a rural vs. an urban/suburban existence rather than something that can be deliniated by country's borders.
No Adam, what you call a snack, is unfortunately a common US meal. But some of us are old-fashioned and we cook good suppers for ourselves and for our familes.
Actually a Big Mac causes a lot people intestinal distress, a eupehemism for gas, belching and general gastro-intestional disaster.
How can a sandwich of beef, lettuce, cheese, onions and pickles cause one such a disaster?
If such a sauce were so devastating, all of its patrons would order a Big Mac without it. LOL! Whatever, try a chilli sauce and see how you go.
In the UK, what you call the midday meal and the evening meal can be subtle class indicators.
If it's "dinner" and "tea" respectively, you tend to be working/lower middle class.
If it's "lunch" and "dinner," you tend to be Blairite metrosexual class and up. Indeed, "lunch" may not even routinely be taken - unless it's a business get-together on top of the OXO Building.
And the higher up the class scale you go, the later "dinner" will be.
Morning - breakfast
Mid-morning - morning tea/recess
Noon/Midday - lunch (have also called it "crib")
Mid-afternoon - afternoon tea
Evening - dinner/tea
Snack - can be brunch
Late evening/early - midnight snack
"mid-morning- morning tea/reces"
Frances, where are you from? Recess is the word used in New England and I think elswhere in the US for the mroning and afternoon breaks given to schoolchildren to go out in the schoolyard and play.
"It's the special sauce."
You may have hit it, Uriel. But I don't know, I don't frequent MacD's unless I'm traveling by highway a long distance and get hungry and it's the only place enroute. I just get the regular hamburgers and they sit well enough for me but they aren't the best tasting things and the consistency is off. But they have no "special" sauce. I'll have to tell everybody or maybe I'll be brave next time and try the special sauce.
<<Since they farmed, the early meals were more important than the evening meals, because those were the hours in which they needed their strength. In the cities, like Boston, where people usually worked in either offices or factories or such, the evening meal was the heaviest meal because you had to sacrifice your human needs to the company, during the day.>>
That has been exactly my thinking about the subject as most farmers are often hard at work several hours before urbanites even wake up, so they are generally extremely hungry come mid-day.
There's also what we call "High Tea" -
High Tea: When a British youngster says, "I've had my tea," she means that she's eaten her supper. High tea is a meal popular in Scotland, where dinner was, until recently, taken in the middle of the day. High tea is an early evening meal involving some modest hot dish, such as a kipper or macaroni cheese, and may not include tea at all. In the United States, it is confused with afternoon tea, the "high" being assumed to refer somehow to social elevation, and to the refinement of a formal tea set. This snack almost always has tea, perhaps biscuits (cookies) or scones, and often buttered bread and jam. The signs proudly offering "high tea" should really read "afternoon tea." There are also "cream teas" featuring Devon clotted cream or something similar.