Supper vs. Dinner

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Beth. I’m calling from Las Vegas, Nevada.

Hey, Beth.

And I was just wondering about the term supper versus dinner and maybe the origin of it.

You’re from Las Vegas?

I’m actually from Wyoming, but I’m going to school in Vegas right now.

What do they do in Wyoming? What’s dinner and what’s supper?

Well, why I’m asking actually is because my mom always refers to supper as the last meal of the day and dinner as whatever the largest meal of the day is.

She’s actually from South Dakota.

But we miscommunicate all the time because she’ll invite me over for dinner when she actually means lunch.

Oh, really?

Oh, interesting.

Yeah.

And so you show up at the house.

Really late?

Well, she’ll send me a text saying dinner is in a half an hour and it’ll be 11 in the morning.

Oh!

Yeah, but that’s interesting that you are culturally different than your mother on these words.

Well, yeah, I mean, so she and her whole side of the family say it that way,

But, I mean, everyone else I’ve ever met doesn’t use it that way, so.

There was a bunch of data gathered by Burt Vox.

He’s a dialect guy and great linguist, good fellow, years ago, the 90s, was it?

And it was recently remapped by Joshua Katz at North Carolina State University.

One of the dialect questions was, what’s the difference between dinner and supper?

And so if you look at this map, on the West Coast, this whole big region is they don’t use the term supper.

And it kind of graduates to the east, you know.

The further east you get, the less sure they are about whether or not they use the word supper.

Wyoming is kind of a mishmash.

It does say there’s no distinction and they have the same meaning, at least with this map.

And then there’s this whole big red part of the country where there’s no distinction and they mean the same thing.

And then there’s these little pockets of like yellow where supper is an evening meal and dinner is eaten earlier.

And that sounds like what your mother uses.

Yeah.

Is South Dakota one of those places?

Yes, it is.

South Dakota, North Dakota and Nebraska.

Oh, OK.

That’s where she’s from?

Yep.

There we go.

We’ve explained it.

Yeah.

And it’s really, it’s like one interesting thing is like you’ll get pockets of interesting things happen like around northern Virginia, Maryland, D.C., Delaware, in that region.

They don’t use the term supper, but all around them, people think that there’s no distinction between supper and dinner.

In my vocabulary from Missouri, I’m firmly in that there’s no distinction.

Dinner and supper interchangeable.

In my experience, dinner is always something more formal.

It’s an evening meal, but it’s more formal.

Supper is something you have around the table with your family.

Dinner is maybe you invite friends over to dinner.

You go out to dinner.

I know that.

But I would never, never say dinner for lunch.

I know that dinner.

Yeah.

But I also know the lunch dinner.

I know both dinners.

You know the lunch dinner?

I have them both, yeah.

But they’re both very clear to me from context only.

But standing alone is individual words.

It’s impossible to say which one is met.

Well, exactly.

Do you go out to supper?

Yeah, that’s a good question.

I’ve never heard that, but maybe.

Or do you go out to dinner?

You go out to dinner, Beth?

Yeah.

Well, you know what, Beth?

I am sure that we’re going to hear from fellow listeners about this with lots of opinions about what is dinner and what is supper.

And I just want to say to all of you who are about to email and tweet and call, just know that there’s a lot of varied experience in this country.

Just accept it.

Beth, thanks for calling.

The email box is about to explode.

Thank you for having me.

Yes.

All right.

Take care.

All right.

Bye-bye.

If you’ve got an opinion on the difference between dinner and supper, what time of day, what kind of meal, formal or informal, whether or not they’re the same or different, give us a call, 877-929-9673.

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