Read this article today on the difference between the terms Dinner and Supper; and also why no one uses that last term anymore. The article basically states that farming families called the mid-day meal dinner and the evening meal supper, whereas non farming, middle class families just called the evening meal dinner (I suppose implying that they didn't have a mid-day meal?).
Dinner is from Latin meaning to break one's fast, but refers to the largest meal eaten during the day. Once you'd come home from school and your middle class job, you had your largest meal, which was in the evening. Supper is from the French, which stood for the lightest meal had during the day, and thus was taken to be the evening meal here in regards to farming families. These people would have their largest meal during the day to have more energy for their tasks and then lighter fare before bed. This was very confusing to me as a kid; this whole dinner/supper thing. My parents used the word lunch to refer to the mid-day meal, and because of their different upbringings would interchange dinner/supper for the evening meal. My maternal grandmother referred to these meals and lunch and dinner. The confusing part came when visiting my paternal grandparents, for they referred to lunch as dinner and dinner as supper, so I didn't know why we were having this dinner/supper meal at lunchtime. My maternal grandmother was born at the end of the Edwardian period. She was from a middle class family in Ohio. Her father worked for the newspaper, so even when the Great Depression hit, she could still go to the picture show and attend university, unlike so many other people during that time. She referred to the lighter, mid-day meal as lunch (and may have even said luncheon on an occasion or two), with dinner being the larger, evening meal. My paternal grandparents came from poor (sharecropping) families in Arkansas. My grandparents' family was so poor that he had to stop attending school in the 8th grade to help with farming work. My grandmother didn't finish high school. Though they had a lighter meal in the mid-day it was referred to as dinner, with the larger, evening meal being supper, but in their youth the amount of food was switched to make the terms more apt to the meanings in the article. My dad, though while he was raised in parts of Arkansas and Mississippi growing up, he spent the majority of his childhood and teenage years in the southern part of this state and has some really weird sayings as opposed to the rest of his family. Every member of his family referred to soda as Coke, regardless of whether it was an actual Cocoa Cola, member of that brand or not. My yankee grandmother referred to it as soda, as well as my mom, and I liked that, so that's what I call it. However, my dad called soda soft drinks. He's the only person I know who calls them that. A quiz once on regional terms showed that it comes from up North Carolina and West Virginia way; places where he has never lived. Or the fact that he called the mid-day meal lunch. Did he just hear my mom call it that (they have been dating since they were fifteen), and like that? Or were the other south Mississippi kids calling it that, and it stuck with him? Because I'm unsure of his term of lunch when his parents and siblings all call it dinner. Some commenters to the article talk about having dinner then supper and then after supper someone would comment what was for lunch, because they referred to the evening snack after the evening meal as that term. That is interesting. While it's not entirely related it seems very 1950's to me and reminds me of the parents calling each other Mother and Father or Mother and Dad. This never happened in my yankee grandmothers home. Though my grandfather had died before I was born, The Sister was confused when this happened at our paternal grandparents' house, which that and my mom saying is how I know it wasn't a thing with them. Sometimes my paternal grandfather would call my grandmother Mother or Mom. "Uh... mom... how is grandma grandpa's mom?" to which my mom replied, "She's not. It's just something some people do." which didn't explain it to me at all. There was a lady my mom was friends with whom I later cleaned house for. They were also southerners who grew up on the poorer side. She was a tad younger than my grandparents, but was still pushing 80 when I worked for her. She called her husband Dad sometimes and he would call her Mom. Though I don't have exact answers, I believe it's either to reiterate training for the kids or else help them feel safe or something? It's for the benefit of the children. First names of parents should never be used as it's considered disrespectful, so if you hear your parents calling each other mom and dad, and that's what you call them too, so hey! And I think it just becomes habit to randomly continue with it even when the children are all grown. The only other time I've heard this really where it stuck out was in the film The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio with Julianne Moore and Woody Harrelson. Mother and Dad, respectively, were the terms they used for each other. In my house I heard my parents say Paul and Jill to each other, and then would use "Your mom..." or "Your dad...". That's a slightly complicated subject in itself as that's not really all I heard. Mom, being adopted, was renamed Jill, and stopped using that right about the time I was born, however everyone was accustomed to it, so I'd heard Jill or Rachel used for her name and it was confusing. Also, she tried to instill in us the term Daddy for dad, since that's what each of them called their fathers. It didn't stick. It's just dad around here. She also tried to get us to call her Mother, as her adopted mom has done. Dad tried to get us to call her Mama, as he'd done with his own mom. Didn't work either. It was just mom. Luckily our grandmothers just wanted to both be called Grandma, and our grandpa as Grandpa. No, one term for this set and another for the others. No Nanny's or Mee-maws, or Grand-ma-ma's or Pappy's or Pee-paws. Incidentally we heard our much younger cousin call our uncle, her grandpa, Pappy. It was so cute that we reference our dad as Pappy when talking about the cats. He's Pappy to the cats. Mom is Habu for the cats. Also pee-paws are cat paws and not country grandfathers in this house. The world has me to thank for all this instituting of language (well, The Sister and I were both agreed on the term Pappy though). One last note since turned out to not strictly be about food anyway. We have family friends from Kentucky (the parents are) and they get their grandkids to call them Grandmom and Granddad, which is adorable even though it makes sense considering no one calls their parents Ma and Pa anymore, so the terms Grandma and Grandpa really are defunct. But, no one gets their grandkids to call them that, that I've heard except these guys. I love that.
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AuthorA girl from South Mississippi who finds herself in exploration. Archives
November 2019
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