Try telling that to Germans.

And it's entirely relevant to my original contention as an example of a large region of the world that describes lunch and dinner in their correct sequence.


Literally nobody uses literal translations in everyday speech. Literally.


I like German food. What's not to like about lots of meat and dairy products with a liberal helping of fried potatoes? My arteries and waistline tend to disagree but I haven't listened to those spoilsports in years.

And you missed out the beer. Weissbeer and Dunkels are some of my favourite beers.

That irrefutable font, Wikipedia, says ... [iOriginally, dinner referred to the first meal of a two-meal day, a heavy meal occurring about noon, which broke the night's fast in the new day. The word is from the Old French (ca 1300) disner, meaning "breakfast", from the stem of Gallo-Romance desjunare ("to break one's fast"icon_wink.gif, from Latin dis- ("undo"icon_wink.gif + Late Latin ieiunare ("to fast"icon_wink.gif, from Latin ieiunus ("fasting, hungry"icon_wink.gif.[3][4] The Spanish word "desayuno", the Romanian "dejun", and the French "déjeuner" retain this etymology (such as Portuguese "desjejum", while referring to breakfast). Eventually, the term shifted to referring to the heavy main meal of the day, even if it had been preceded by a breakfast meal.[/i


... which mean it's breakfast anyway.


You know what, I'm leaning towards what someone posted earlier, i.e. it being the main meal, regardless of whether it's at dinnertime or teatime.
Which, of course, means that I must now exclude "lunchtime" from my vocab.
There ... it's gone.

You're going to miss a lot of meetings. And a fair number of meals.

I must admit that when I did German Literature at A-level being extremely surprised at the fact that anyone could get any sort of lyrical or nuanced qualities into literary works, but they do, although it's very different. But you've got to love the sheer practicality of German wordsmiths - don't invent a series of sounds, just knock some individual words together into compounds and that'll do. However blunt. Tell it like it is! Don't hold back! Why get clever? What's wrong with bustenhalter?

Meat? It ain't "meat", it's FLESH! (Fleisch)

Want a contraceptive? Just ask for a Schwangerschaftverhütungsmittel ("pregnancy prevention means"icon_wink.gif

And indeed the result is that they often do it better than other languages.
Which says more - Pollution? or Umweltverschmutzung ("environment filthying"icon_wink.gif. Even if you can't understand a word of German, you just know that's a Bad Thing, right?

And on occasions, we just admit we can't beat them, and adopt their creation.
Schadenfreude, anyone?

What about a night-shift worker eating roast beef & Yorkshires at 06.30: is that breakfast, lunch, dinner or tea?

More pertinently, does it fooking matter?

Lived in various locations in and around London for 22 yrs now and it's generally accepted by those closest to me that its breakfast dinner and tea. If we go out in the evening we go out for a "meal". We often use the term Brunch at the weekend on lazy days. We have Sunday dinner for a roast meal. Or simply state we are having a "roast dinner".
That said my wife states its breakfast lunch and dinner. Though she gets stumped when I ask her who looks after the kids at school between 12pm and 1pm.
What we have to remember is that these sayings evolved in a different era when the working week was so very much different to what it is today.
But as Cody says who cares. The true English language is a evolving and fluid beast. That's its beauty. Yes it can be ised by Americans but equally the Australians and their shocking soaps have had an effect over the past 25 years and the list goes on.

Look, you eat your dinner at dinner time and your tea at tea time and anyone who tells you otherwise is a bleeding poof!

Daily running order is thus....

Yer Breakfast
Yer 10 o'clock
Yer Dinner
Yer 3 o'clock
Yer Tea
Yer Supper

Its the law.

Blimey, when you're on the scales and you look down, can you see the scales anymore ?

I'm just big boned......

No, I'm not, even though it would be a desirable state of affairs

In the Navy we had

0700 : scran
1200 : scran
1700 : scran
2100 : nine 'o' clockers

From Oldham, living in St Helens, Head of yr 8 in Oldham secondary.

The midday break is called lunchtime or dinnertime or both in one sentence. "im in detention at dinner miss so can I eat my lunch in your office?" Or I'm having a hot dinner at lunch today"

The evening meal is always, always tea though.

At Mintball Mansions, the small, midday meal is lunch. Because it's a small, midday meal.

Dinner is the main meal of the day. In the evening. At dinnertime.

So there.