100+ Differences between British and American English | British vs. American Vocabulary Words

Pam said:
I don't think that the usage of the word can or tin is regional. I'm from the north west of England, my late husband was from the south of England and we both used the word tin, never can. Regarding meals, in my neck of the woods it's breakfast, dinner and tea whereas to my husband it would have been breakfast, lunch, dinner.

Something this area and some other parts of north west England have in common with Americans is that trousers are called pants. 👖
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That's interesting, I usually have breakfast, lunch and dinner.. But I think it's to do with the size of the meal.. If I were to have a large cooked meal at around midday or an hour or so later, my final meal in the evening would be my tea.. So I occasionally have breakfast, dinner, tea.. If I'm feeling really wicked, I may even have supper in the late evening...

Haha, being a southerner.. pants to me are worn under my trousers or, if I'm feeling really silly, on my head like a balaclava.. 🤪
 

Wolfhammer said:
That's interesting, I usually have breakfast, lunch and dinner.. But I think it's to do with the size of the meal.. If I were to have a large cooked meal at around midday or an hour or so later, my final meal in the evening would be my tea.. So I occasionally have breakfast, dinner, tea.. If I'm feeling really wicked, I may even have supper in the late evening...

Haha, being a southerner.. pants to me are worn under my trousers or, if I'm feeling really silly, on my head like a balaclava.. 🤪
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That is silly. :ROFLMAO:

So, you use the term supper as well? I know that's used here, but I think it's more of a southern thing; not actually sure. For me, being raised in S. CA, by people from KY, it was always Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner.
 
Wolfhammer said:
That's interesting, I usually have breakfast, lunch and dinner.. But I think it's to do with the size of the meal.. If I were to have a large cooked meal at around midday or an hour or so later, my final meal in the evening would be my tea.. So I occasionally have breakfast, dinner, tea.. If I'm feeling really wicked, I may even have supper in the late evening...
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That would have been my husband's thinking too. But not me. Sandwich midday is still dinner, large cooked meal in the evening is still tea. ;)
 

Medusa said:
That is silly. :ROFLMAO:

So, you use the term supper as well? I know that's used here, but I think it's more of a southern thing; not actually sure. For me, being raised in S. CA, by people from KY, it was always Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner.
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And in my Nova Scotia family it was always Breakfast, Dinner and Supper! I still get confused when I read about people going to Dinner in the evening! Don't they know that Dinner is always at noon! :)
 
Old Salt said:
And in my Nova Scotia family it was always Breakfast, Dinner and Supper! I still get confused when I read about people going to Dinner in the evening! Don't they know that Dinner is always at noon! :)
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This reminds me of part of a Civil War Era song called, "Old Dan Tucker," part of which lyrics are:

"Get out the way old Dan Tucker

You’re too late to git your supper

Supper’s gone and dinner cookin’

Old Dan Tucker’s just a-standin’ there lookin’."

Which would indicate that in that time and place Supper was Lunch. So it would have been, Breakfast, Supper, Dinner.

I wonder how these things get organized?

EDIT: Fixed a error.
 
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In parts of the US, supper and dinner are used interchangeably to refer to the evening meal, but they’re not exactly synonyms.


What do these words mean?​


Dinner, which dates back to the late 1200s, refers to the main meal of the day—historically, a meal served midday for many peoples.


The term comes from the Middle English diner, which, via French, goes back to a Vulgar Latin word represented as disjejunare, meaning “to break one’s fast.” The verb dine also comes from this root.


Supper, in terms of word origins, is associated with the evening. It comes from an Old French word souper, meaning “evening meal,” a noun based on a verb meaning “to eat or serve (a meal).” Fun fact: the word soup, also entering English from French, is probably related. The deeper roots of supper, soup, and related words like sup and sop, appear to be from Germanic roots from way back when.


What time is dinner?​


So if someone asks you over for dinner, how do you know what time they expect you? The answer has changed over time as the ways people earn their living have changed.


Up until the mid-1800s, dinner referred to a midday meal, while supper served as a light evening meal for those needing additional nutrition after a hard day’s work.


In the medieval period, the hours of devotion influenced mealtime customs as well. Monks ate “nine hours after daybreak,” which translated roughly between noon and 3 p.m., according to Food and Feast in Medieval England.


The noble classes used their dinner as a way to show off their wealth, parading their servants, plates of food, and fancy dishware. The lower classes ate at the same time but without the pomp and circumstance. Eating a heavy meal at this point in the day made sense; after all, there was no artificial lighting available at the time. Anything eaten in the evening was typically just a snack.


When did mealtime customs change?​


The settlers who arrived in the US brought their customs, including a noontime dinner. Because theirs was an agrarian society, this meal remained the most important of the day until well into the 1900s.


In 1828, Noah Webster’s Dictionary stated, “The dinner of fashionable people would be the supper of rustics,” reflecting the prominence of dinner as the term for a midday meal in some rural parts of the country.


While the 1945 edition of Emily Post’s Etiquette described dinner as a meal eaten either at midday or in the evening, by the 1960s, the guide refers to the midday meal as lunch. While an agrarian class may prefer the noontime dinner, people who work in an office today opt for a heavier meal in the evening, when it can be shared with the entire family.

read more here... https://www.dictionary.com/e/supper-vs-dinner/
 
...and

It’s the most important meal of the day but when it comes to referring to your evening feed, Britons are a nation divided. Do you call it dinner, tea or supper? Which one is correct? And what does your choice of name say about you?


A poll by YouGov in 2018 found that 57% of English people use the term dinner, while a third say tea and just 5% favour supper. You may assume this split is along class lines, but the divide is more of a geographical one, with both working and middle-class northerners tending to say tea, with dinner the winner down south.


Three-quarters of Scots use dinner too, according to a survey by Travelodge in 2020, with only 19% eating tea. There are no figures to confirm what their Celtic cousins in Wales and Northern Ireland think but anecdotally, tea comes top. Interestingly, Welsh speakers have one interchangeable word for the midday and evening meal – ‘cinio’ – along with ‘te’ for tea and ‘swper’ for supper.

Why do we say dinner?​

The confusion has arisen because the way we consume food and when we do it has evolved to reflect changes in society. The concept of eating three square meals a day is fairly recent. The Romans missed breakfast and had one large meal at lunch time, a routine that continued into the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

This feed became known as dinner, a name derived from the Old French word ‘disner’, meaning to dine or break a fast. The timing made sense because daylight was required to cook and land labourers were hungry after toiling since sunrise. “Dinner has more of less the same meaning as breakfast – not fasting anymore,” says Pen Vogler, food historian and author of Scoff: A History of Food and Class in Britain (Atlantic Books, £9.99). “That’s because our earliest dinners would have been in the mid-morning. There’s reference in Shakespeare to dinner in this way and Pepys eats dinner at noon.”


But as working patterns changed with the Industrial Revolution, many people, particularly in the south, laboured further from home. This meant the big meal crept later as they did not the chance to go back to eat. Meanwhile, the wealthier classes, who had access to artificial lighting, pushed their dining time back even further. Queen Victoria took hers at 8pm – a long time after breakfast, necessitating a new mealtime in between to sustain her ilk, known as lunch or luncheon.

“It moves really fast and quickly, by six or eight hours,” says Pen. “There are a growing number of people wanting to aspire to a higher class and an easy way to do it is eating later to be seen as sophisticated. Having it mid-afternoon, even by Jane Austen’s time, is seen as being a bit country bumpkin-ish.”

https://www.lovefood.com/news/58761/dinner-tea-or-supper
 
hollydolly said:
In parts of the US, supper and dinner are used interchangeably to refer to the evening meal, but they’re not exactly synonyms.


What do these words mean?​


Dinner, which dates back to the late 1200s, refers to the main meal of the day—historically, a meal served midday for many peoples.


The term comes from the Middle English diner, which, via French, goes back to a Vulgar Latin word represented as disjejunare, meaning “to break one’s fast.” The verb dine also comes from this root.


Supper, in terms of word origins, is associated with the evening. It comes from an Old French word souper, meaning “evening meal,” a noun based on a verb meaning “to eat or serve (a meal).” Fun fact: the word soup, also entering English from French, is probably related. The deeper roots of supper, soup, and related words like sup and sop, appear to be from Germanic roots from way back when.


What time is dinner?​


So if someone asks you over for dinner, how do you know what time they expect you? The answer has changed over time as the ways people earn their living have changed.


Up until the mid-1800s, dinner referred to a midday meal, while supper served as a light evening meal for those needing additional nutrition after a hard day’s work.


In the medieval period, the hours of devotion influenced mealtime customs as well. Monks ate “nine hours after daybreak,” which translated roughly between noon and 3 p.m., according to Food and Feast in Medieval England.


The noble classes used their dinner as a way to show off their wealth, parading their servants, plates of food, and fancy dishware. The lower classes ate at the same time but without the pomp and circumstance. Eating a heavy meal at this point in the day made sense; after all, there was no artificial lighting available at the time. Anything eaten in the evening was typically just a snack.


When did mealtime customs change?​


The settlers who arrived in the US brought their customs, including a noontime dinner. Because theirs was an agrarian society, this meal remained the most important of the day until well into the 1900s.


In 1828, Noah Webster’s Dictionary stated, “The dinner of fashionable people would be the supper of rustics,” reflecting the prominence of dinner as the term for a midday meal in some rural parts of the country.


While the 1945 edition of Emily Post’s Etiquette described dinner as a meal eaten either at midday or in the evening, by the 1960s, the guide refers to the midday meal as lunch. While an agrarian class may prefer the noontime dinner, people who work in an office today opt for a heavier meal in the evening, when it can be shared with the entire family.

read more here... https://www.dictionary.com/e/supper-vs-dinner/
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hollydolly said:
...and

It’s the most important meal of the day but when it comes to referring to your evening feed, Britons are a nation divided. Do you call it dinner, tea or supper? Which one is correct? And what does your choice of name say about you?


A poll by YouGov in 2018 found that 57% of English people use the term dinner, while a third say tea and just 5% favour supper. You may assume this split is along class lines, but the divide is more of a geographical one, with both working and middle-class northerners tending to say tea, with dinner the winner down south.


Three-quarters of Scots use dinner too, according to a survey by Travelodge in 2020, with only 19% eating tea. There are no figures to confirm what their Celtic cousins in Wales and Northern Ireland think but anecdotally, tea comes top. Interestingly, Welsh speakers have one interchangeable word for the midday and evening meal – ‘cinio’ – along with ‘te’ for tea and ‘swper’ for supper.

Why do we say dinner?​

The confusion has arisen because the way we consume food and when we do it has evolved to reflect changes in society. The concept of eating three square meals a day is fairly recent. The Romans missed breakfast and had one large meal at lunch time, a routine that continued into the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

This feed became known as dinner, a name derived from the Old French word ‘disner’, meaning to dine or break a fast. The timing made sense because daylight was required to cook and land labourers were hungry after toiling since sunrise. “Dinner has more of less the same meaning as breakfast – not fasting anymore,” says Pen Vogler, food historian and author of Scoff: A History of Food and Class in Britain (Atlantic Books, £9.99). “That’s because our earliest dinners would have been in the mid-morning. There’s reference in Shakespeare to dinner in this way and Pepys eats dinner at noon.”


But as working patterns changed with the Industrial Revolution, many people, particularly in the south, laboured further from home. This meant the big meal crept later as they did not the chance to go back to eat. Meanwhile, the wealthier classes, who had access to artificial lighting, pushed their dining time back even further. Queen Victoria took hers at 8pm – a long time after breakfast, necessitating a new mealtime in between to sustain her ilk, known as lunch or luncheon.

“It moves really fast and quickly, by six or eight hours,” says Pen. “There are a growing number of people wanting to aspire to a higher class and an easy way to do it is eating later to be seen as sophisticated. Having it mid-afternoon, even by Jane Austen’s time, is seen as being a bit country bumpkin-ish.”

https://www.lovefood.com/news/58761/dinner-tea-or-supper
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Well, that was thorough. I feel so enlightened on these words now. :)
Thanks, @hollydolly
 
hollydolly said:
we use Thinking About, more often than thinking ON ... and probably more than thinking of...
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Just my interpretation ... no known rules ... but "thinking on" is akin to contemplating or pondering (and I would generally use one of the latter two words). One might spend time "thinking on the meaning of life".

"Thinking of" is usually in reference to a specific example. If we were discussing situations that might justify the use of violence, I might say "I'm thinking of a situation where another's life is in danger".

"Thinking about" is the most ambiguous (and most commonly used). Is is used in reference to planning, as in "I'm thinking about calling on Bob when I'm in his area". It's also used in describing describing content. "The book is about sailing ships." It also can mean approximately as in "I'm about six feet tall". I'm sure there are other loose definitions that aren't coming to mind.

But I'm not about to spend much time thinking on the subject. :D
 
Tommy said:
Just my interpretation ... no known rules ... but "thinking on" is akin to contemplating or pondering (and I would generally use one of the latter two words). One might spend time "thinking on the meaning of life".

"Thinking of" is usually in reference to a specific example. If we were discussing situations that might justify the use of violence, I might say "I'm thinking of a situation where another's life is in danger".

"Thinking about" is the most ambiguous (and most commonly used). Is is used in reference to planning, as in "I'm thinking about calling on Bob when I'm in his area". It's also used in describing describing content. "The book is about sailing ships." It also can mean approximately as in "I'm about six feet tall". I'm sure there are other loose definitions that aren't coming to mind.

But I'm not about to spend much time thinking on the subject. :D
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nor me thinking about it.....:LOL:
 
Tommy said:
Just my interpretation ... no known rules ... but "thinking on" is akin to contemplating or pondering (and I would generally use one of the latter two words). One might spend time "thinking on the meaning of life".
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Yes, I can see that! My problem, if you can call it that since I don't lose any sleep over it, is that thinking "ON" is now used in so many cases where using "about" would make more sense.

I have the same problem with the casual use of "waiting on" in so many of the books I read. <giving myself a slap for being so repetitious> Not so long ago, I would swear, you always waited "for" someone, unless you were a server! English, the ever changing language! Forgive me, I am old and set in my thinking and about to "make a beeline" for the TV and the evening news!
 
In Scotland when we're waiting for something we say ''Waiting on''.. we're waiting on our sister to get ready to go out , we're waiting on our dinner to be ready...
Here in England if you say 'waiting on'' that means you're serving someone... instead they say ''Waiting For''.... it took me a few years to get used to that..
 
hollydolly said:
In Scotland when we're waiting for something we say ''Waiting on''.. we're waiting on our sister to get ready to go out , we're waiting on our dinner to be ready...
Here in England if you say 'waiting on'' that means you're serving someone... instead they say ''Waiting For''.... it took me a few years to get used to that..
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Ah, thanks HD, you just gave me the explanation I was looking for. It's a regional thing. I don't think I have ever heard anyone in Nova Scotia say that they were waiting on someone when they were waiting for someone! I am ecstatic and will leave the subject alone now!
 
Here is something new to me. I just read this in a book: "I am famished, as the Brits would say! That can't be true, can it? I thought the whole English speaking world used the word!
 
Old Salt said:
Here is something new to me. I just read this in a book: "I am famished, as the Brits would say! That can't be true, can it? I thought the whole English speaking world used the word!
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yes it's very true...it means incredibly hungry..looking forward to dinner etc... ( different to someone who is genuinely starving )
 
hollydolly said:
yes it's very true...it means incredibly hungry..looking forward to dinner etc... ( different to someone who is genuinely starving )
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I know HD, I use the word all the time! I was startled because I always thought everybody used "famished!" in the English speaking world, Americans included! The author made it exclusively Brit! And it was uttered by an American.
 

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