When I was a little lad, dinner was what we ate around midday and lunch was something that was packed and carried, what we might call a packed lunch nowadays. I can remember my mother saying, when I was going out for the day with the Cubs, that she would pack me a lunch for my dinner. The evening meal was always called teatime in our house. Quoting my mother again, I remember her describing our (Christmas-only) habit of delaying the main meal as "We're having our dinner at teatime". For working men, that packed meal could also be "snap" (often in a "snap tin"icon_wink.gif or "bait" (often in a "bait box"icon_wink.gif. This item from the BBC seems to back up the (generally) Northern habit of terming the midday meal as "dinner". www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20243692 What do you call it?

When I was a little lad, dinner was what we ate around midday and lunch was something that was packed and carried, what we might call a packed lunch nowadays. I can remember my mother saying, when I was going out for the day with the Cubs, that she would pack me a lunch for my dinner. The evening meal was always called teatime in our house. Quoting my mother again, I remember her describing our (Christmas-only) habit of delaying the main meal as "We're having our dinner at teatime". For working men, that packed meal could also be "snap" (often in a "snap tin"icon_wink.gif or "bait" (often in a "bait box"icon_wink.gif. This item from the BBC seems to back up the (generally) Northern habit of terming the midday meal as "dinner". www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20243692 What do you call it?

Dinner at dinnertime. Tea at teatime.

Its not "dinner", its "me dinner", likewise its "me tea".

Although when I was at Junior School we had a lad who's dad was from East Yorkshire, the bit that comes just after the A1 but not quite as far as Hull, and he called it "us tea".

All very correct too.
Nowt wrong wi' any of that.

what he said, plus supper at supper time. Usually a cup of tea and some choccy biscuits when i was a kid, then it became a donner kebab and now is some warm milk.

always been dinner time for me

but lunch seems to be taking over!

It's lunch and dinner pretty much everywhere in the world apart from the M62 corridor.

I've heard that word.
Where was this ?

Wigan. Don't know were the term originated and I've never heard it used anywhere else but Wigan.

I lived up north (Wigan) until I was 23 and it was always Dinner and Tea. I've lived in the West Mids/Warwickshire for 10 years now so it's become Lunch and Dinner.

Mind you, they also call s batches. (Hahaha, it would appear I can't say b@rmcake!)

In response to jackbit - I've always thought it was a generic northern term for a hearty snack in between meals.

Coming from Leigh I've heard the word quite a bit. However, it's always in the context of "Do you know what jackbit means?"

I've never heard anyone actually say I'm having my jackbit.

Nope. Every school in the country that provides meals provides "school dinners". I've never heard of one providing "school lunches"

The kids that paid have always taken their dinner money to school, never their lunch money.

Even that southern jessy Jamie Oliver knows it's dinners - rlhttp://www.jamieoliver.com/school-dinnersrl

I don't think it is dinner in any other country as they speak different languages so whatever the word is, "dinner" would not be it. Unless you count American "English", which I don't really, and they I think do or did have a school lunch program, but the cursed Americans are responsible for most of the abominations to the mother tongue, and this confusion is probably just one more confusion-creating example.

The origins of "lunch" are clearly in the English invention of "luncheon", and that was traditionally a light "in-between" meal, originally taken by ladies, and certainly no sort of a main meal.

A school dinner has always traditionally been a 3 course meal, certainly no less than a hot main course, and a pudding (sorry - "dessert"icon_wink.gif. If at dinnertime someone (including schoolkids) are not having dinner (eg going on a school trip) they may well take a "packed lunch". That may be like a sandwich, crisps,a biscuit or an apple, maybe a carton of juice, basically light and portable snack food. Everyone knows what (in the context of food) a "lunchbox" is.

Schoolchildren might have dinner while at school, but once they start work, they might just have lunch ie a sandwich or a pasty or something, so it is no longer dinner, because it's not a "dinner". Certainly in Yorkshire, though, your big meal in the evening is your "tea", which is a complete change from what began life as "afternoon tea". So a typical Yorkshireman may have a breakfast early doors, and is likely to use "me dinner" interchangeably with "me lunch", but he will always be off home for 'is tea - and never off home for 'is dinner unless at dinnertime.

If I say I'll meet you "at dinnertime" - when would you expect me to arrive?

Been in Manchester this week and they have dinnor
.

This forum has discussed this before.
Definitely pudding ... seeing as dessert is the fruit and suchlke that comes after the pudding.