Supper vs. dinner! If somebody tells you that you should come over for supper, what time do you think they expect you to be there? And what if they invite you for dinner? In fact, you cannot be sure if they are talking about the afternoon or the evening meal if they don’t specify the time because these two words are often used interchangeably. But is there a difference between a dinner and a supper?
Supper vs. Dinner
DINNER doesn’t refer to a specific time, yet it always refers to the main meal of the day. In contrast, SUPPER is the evening meal.
The word dinner comes from Latin where a similar word means “to break one’s fast”. Whenever dinner might happen, be it during the day or the evening, you can always expect it to be a big meal, with many dishes of all kinds. On the other hand, supper comes from French “evening meal”, leaving little to the imagination. Jesus’s last meal is known as the Last Supper, so in a way, you can say that supper is also the last meal of the day.
But how do you know if the main meal of someone who is inviting you for dinner is during the day or the evening? As Noah Webster put it, “the dinner of fashionable people would be the supper of rustics”. This means that a midday meal is called dinner only in rural parts of the country. Everywhere else, a midday meal is expected to be called lunch.
Though you can still hear the word supper in conversations, it is a lot less frequently used than at the beginning of the 20th century. At the same time, the word lunch started gaining more popularity. Today, dinner is the most popular word related to meals out of the three, so you can feel safe using it, regardless of the time of the day you are talking about. The best thing you can do, however, is to always tell your guests the time of the meal, rather than calling it a supper, a lunch, or a dinner. This way, you will avoid confusion and always have your guests arriving on time.
Supper vs. Dinner Examples
- After dinner sit a while, after supper walk a while.
- I hope you are feeling thankful after your supper.
- Come and have supper with us on Wednesday, if you’re free.
- He wanted me to stay for supper.
- Try this tasty dish for supper with a crispy salad.
- She began to harp us to drink after dinner.
- Make sure your hands are clean before you have your dinner.
- What do you want to eat for dinner?
- I had a huge lunch, so I’ll only need a snack for dinner.
- Do you want to go out for dinner?
Difference between Dinner vs. Supper | Image
Supper vs. Dinner: Difference between Dinner vs. Supper
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