What Do U Call It: Dinner or Supper

From a long line of northeasteners... breakfast, lunch and supper were week day meals, eaten at home. Sunday dinner was served anytime from noon to evening. Dining out in the evening was always dinner.

Thanks for an interesting question!

My family uses both.

I generally say dinner.

Breakfast
Lunch or Tiffin
Tea
Dinner or Supper

NJ born and raised. I have only said "dinner", as in - we have breakfast, lunch and dinner. I've only heard "supper" from maybe mid-westerners or southerners. BTW, MY question is - do you "make" dinner or "fix" dinner. To me, if you're "fixing" something, it must have been broken. I make dinner or maybe cook dinner, but I never "fix" it. What say you?

Dinner. Supper reminds me of watching Little House on the Prairie when I was a kid ;)

Dinner describes the largest meal of the day. Since most of us eat that in the evening, we call it dinner. My grandma always ate her biggest meal around noon, so she always called that meal dinner. Supper is usually a lighter meal eaten in the evening, esp if the larger meal was during the noontime hour.
That's the technical of it. :)

West Coast here, and we call it dinner! :)

In CA, we have DINNER

California girl here...

I say dinner....and soda!

My mother is from Dorchester, MA. We called it Dinner if it was before 7pm. After 7pm we called it Supper. Typically, if we had Tea around 4pm, we had Supper later. But in Erie, the terms are interchangeable.

There was always dinner and supper in Ky. Now it's lunch and supper for me.

I live in the mid west, St Louis Missouri to be exact. I have heard both though most use dinner. I grew up here so I have always been a city girl, Troy isn't home so I can't get the small town opinion.

I have the feeling this is a small town vs city thing rather than east or west.

Okay so Troy got home and looked at me like I was nuts. He said he calls it dinner, to fit in here, so apparently small town Illinois calls it supper.

Dinner for us.
I was raised in MS and in that area it is supper.

I confuse the hell out of relatives when I say I'm making dinner.

Midwest--We use both in our home, but mostly dinner.

Anyone ever heard of a supper club? Trivia-the first one was opened in Beverly Hills by a Milwaukee owner.

I'm from the south, and I've not met a single person who calls is supper.
We call it Dinner. Our family is primarily very southern, and they also call it dinner.

Interesting!!

It's dinner now that I live in California. I grow up in Iowa and out there they call it supper. My dad was visiting from Iowa a few months ago and my 5yr old thought it was pretty funny that grandpa kept saying supper and "pop" instead of soda. LOL!

Updated

It's dinner now that I live in California. I grow up in Iowa and out there they call it supper. My dad was visiting from Iowa a few months ago and my 5yr old thought it was pretty funny that grandpa kept saying supper and "pop" instead of soda. LOL!

Supper here. At least we don't call the refrigerator the ice box anymore. :-)

you guys are confusing me.
let's get this straight
breakfast (the first meal of the day)
lunch (midday)
dinner (is after 5 pm).
supper is british english for dinner.
whether you call it supper or dinner just make sure it's good food :)

Hmmm...Funny. I live right outside of Seattle. I call it dinner.
I also call *soda* SODA...NOT pop.

I call it Grub. lol just kidding. I call it dinner. It's my understanding that Southerners call it Supper.

I'm in Illinois. We call it supper unless we are going out or having company and then its dinner lol. As in "we are having company for dinner or we are going out for dinner" but at home its supper. and lunch is the middle of the day.

Breakfast - earliest meal
Brunch - between breakfast and lunch (usually on Sunday))
Lunch
We say dinner and/or supper without really noticing which one we use more often.

I am originally from the South. We say Supper!!

Most around here say dinner, but many farming families still say supper. Supper makes me think of my UP relatives.

Dinner is the main meal of the day, either at midday or in the evening. On a holiday it might be midafternoon.

The other meal (that's likely to be a sandwich or leftovers) is either lunch, if it's at midday, or supper if it's in the evening. So you could have breakfast, lunch and dinner or breakfast, dinner and supper.

either
I come from an old south family. So in my family especially with my grandparents it's supper, but my in laws are up north so with them it's dinner. lol. on a day to day basis , it varies lol. Kids know both.

i grew up in philly and only ever heard dinner

When I was young and lived in Upper Michigan we called it supper and my dad who still lives there calls it supper. Sounds weird to me now because I have been calling it dinner ever since I moved away at 12. I always come back with "are you going to have a super supper"? LOL

I grew up in CA and moved to VA 2 years ago. I call it dinner. Always have and always will.

I haven't heard or used the word supper since I left Iowa, back in 1979, lol!!!

I think I say both! Interesting question though - I will pay more attention - but I think I use both regarding our evening meal...midday meal is "lunch" (or "yunch" according to my 2.5 DS!) :-)

The British call it tea. Lol

I'm from CA and we call it dinner. I don't think I've ever used the term supper. If I were to use that word I'm sure my kids would die laughing!!

Dinner.. I have never went to a restaurant that served Supper? I am Sure a few of you will Google it and Find one to prove me Wrong.. Well I am not saying restaurant do not Serve supper! Just that I have never been to one.. It is more of a Down South Hillbilly thing...

Dinner here, but it was "supper" when I was growing up and my parents' generation still calls it that. I've lived in the same area my whole life.

We have dinner in Ohio and we also drink pop.

East Coast first, Midwest now. My Nana in Scranton, PA is the only person I think I've ever noticed saying supper. I don't know if it was regional or generational (she was born in 1916). But her main meal was almost always in the afternoon so supper made sense for her. If we came up from the Philly area to visit her and she said dinner, I knew it would be in the dining room (we usually just made the trip around holiday time so it was an occasion anyway) in the afternoon. If she asked what we wanted for supper, you could bet pizza and beer were served in the kitchen that evening!

I think if we have a big meal around noon/early afternoon, anything eaten after that is just snacks! Mmmm...snacks. :)

PS - oh, and SODA! My dad is Pop.

We call it dinner. I was raised in the south, where we also call any (regular or diet) flavored carbonated beverage a 'Coke'! :)

My dad was a farmer and I grew up around farmers, so I called it supper....which was uncommon for other kids. Now it is dinner, but every once in a while I say supper. Interesting question.

I use both, but never would call lunch "dinner".

I say "supper" because I'm originally from Iowa. After having lived in Illinois for the last 25 years you'd think I would conform and say "dinner." That's what everybody here says.

(When I take my significant other's kids out to eat for dinner, I make them thank me for "supper" just because it makes everybody laugh.)

We call the noon meal lunch. Dinner and supper are used interchangably to refer to the evening meal.
We make groceries and fix dinner (or supper).

Originally from the east, now living in Iowa. I used both interchangeably. I use dinner probably 80% of the time. Most of the people I know, from all around the country, use the term dinner to mean the evening meal and lunch to mean the midday meal.

I'm in the center of Canada and we use both interchangably, but mostly supper. I eat supper at the dinner table, but we go out for dinner. I do think dinner does refer more to a lunch meal though, like Kraft Dinner is ok for lunch, but I wouldn't make it for supper.

It occurred to me that we probably use supper in Canada because in French lunch is diner and the evening meal is souper, and French is our other official language.

Breakfast, Lunch and DINNER!! Which we just finished eating...

In the old south.. Dinner was lunch.... And supper was dinner...this is considered very old fashioned.

But we use Dinner for our last meal of the day....

I'm in Southern California and evening meals are called dinner around here. That's what we call it in our house.
You will hear some people use supper but it's not the norm.

My mom used to call it supper for a long time. I think because my sisters and I started calling it dinner, since our friends did, she changed it up, now we all call it dinner. But yeah we had to be home by suppertime. lol

from Nevada, our family calls it dinner or we say soups on. :)

We call it dinner. I've always lived in NY. I don't know anyone who would invite me to supper, except that my MIL uses that word, and she used it when she still lived in NY, it wasn't something that she started doing when she moved to NC. I think of supper as being something informal, and dinner as what you eat sitting down in the dining room with home cooked food, to be honest.

Growing up military I always adapted to my surroundings, even to the point of picking up accents. I think we called it anything and everything growing up. Now we call it dinner. I haven't used supper in a long time.

I'm from the north east and call it dinner.

Dinner ~ unless I was talking to my Grandparents, then it was Supper.

My generation (50 & younger): Dinner, pretty much every where I've lived: SoCalif, TX, AZ, CO, GA, LA, MD, WA, Maui and Canada

My mom's generation who grew up in the Chicago area (60+ years): Supper, or both.

Sunday's, the evening meal was always called supper.

Riley - I've never heard of Tiffin....I might start using it, because I drink tea every afternoon.

Sounds like supper is on the way out. Just like Divan, now replaced with couch or sofa.

Dinner and I am from Seattle.. Although we joke with my cousin that just started college at UW. She is from Iowa and calls it supper:)

Using an exclamation point for ALL of your puntuation makes your post and SWH very difficult to read. Please try using commas and periods instead.

We call it dinner, but I'm from Washington state as well.

How funny! I'm from Iowa, where we had supper and pop, now in Idaho and it's dinner and soda. My kids look at me funny if I use the term supper or pop now. I think my grandma back in Iowa also called a sofa or couch a davenport.