Tiffin Meal

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Nick Spiker and I’m calling from San Antonio, Texas.

Welcome, Nick. What’s up?

What’s on your mind, Nick?

Yeah, so I wanted to ask about a word, tiffin. It’s a word my dad used to use when we were younger. Maybe I was five or six. My brother was a little older. And on the weekends, he would make us lunch. And he would say, like, hey, we’re having tiffin. And we’d be like, yay, we always loved it. But it would be kind of a meal that he would put together just with whatever was available, like, you know, leftover spaghetti or just carrot sticks or just kind of a mishmash of things collected from, you know, the kitchen and the cupboards and put together on plates. And I’ve never heard the word again. He doesn’t know where it came from. So I was curious if you knew anything about tiffin and what the history of that word is.

Leftover spaghetti and carrot sticks. That sounds like a meal. That’s so interesting. Yeah, particularly for kids. That’s not a bad one for kids. Get the vegetables in there. Get the carbs in there. Not too much complaining. All right. Let me ask you some questions about your dad. Did he spend any time in South Asia?

I don’t think so. He was in the military, but no, I don’t believe he was ever deployed. He’s very well read, though.

Okay. Does he read Kipling?

Maybe. That’s possible.

Okay. Does he spend any time in Indian culture or Sri Lankan or Bangladeshi culture?

Not that I know of, no. Not that I know of. He’s a big war history buff.

Okay. Does he study the British during World War II or World War I or the British Empire?

Yeah, definitely World War II. I think he’s well-versed in that.

Okay. The reason I’m asking all these questions is it’s strange that an American knows this word just for daily use because it generally means a light snack or a lunch, a light lunch, not necessarily eaten at mealtime. So it might be just as you put it, a little bit of this and a little bit of that, although at times it’s been described in various writings as something more elaborate. The Oxford English Dictionary says a light midday meal or a luncheon. Other resources I have, I have a dictionary, a couple of dictionaries of Indian English. One of them quotes an older text that talks about the meals being so elaborate that people would overeat. They would just use it to pass the time kind of stuffing themselves in between meals. Another one says that the tiffin would be grilled fowls, mutton chops, cold meats, and sometimes curry and rice. So just really kind of these elaborate meals. Tiffin is not only the name of the meal, but it’s also the name, even now in India, for the name of the metal container that holds the food. So it’s kind of this stack of circular lunchboxes, so to speak. And you can carry them. And so you have these tiffin wallas, these guys who bring the food from these restaurants, more or less, these cafeterias, to all the offices. You preorder your food, your tiffin, and they bring them to you every single day for lunch. And they just carry these large cylinders, these stacks of these tiffins to all the establishments, and then they come fetch them later. So those are two different meanings of tiffin.

And we’re spelling this T as in Thomas, I, F as in Frank, F as in Frank I-N, right?

Yes, right, Tiffin.

Yeah, that’s how I always imagined it.

So that’s officially an Indian word then.

Yeah, but it comes from English originally. So it’s borrowed into Indian English from an English verb, tiff, meaning to eat or to drink, or to drink slowly.

Oh, maybe from England being there, from colonizing India.

Right, yeah, the English dominating the Indian subcontinent for so long and trying to rule it. Very interesting. I wonder how he started to use that word.

Well, that’s what I was asking. If he studies war, the British and their experience in the subcontinent is something that many people are interested in reading about. War often look into because there are so many successes and failures there. There’s so much to be learned from arrogance and hubris and just different moments of valor and different moments of cowardice. There’s so much to be discovered there when you look at the two sides and the way they succeeded and failed. So often you’ll just run across these great descriptions of the two cultures clashing and learning from each other or rejecting each other. So I wouldn’t be surprised if tiffin came up in his reading.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for your help. That’s awesome.

Yeah, sure. Thanks for calling. I really appreciate it.

Bye-bye.

Now I have to go get Indian food, Martha.

Well, before you do that, there’s no connection with the idea of tiff being a little coral, right?

No. As far as we know, there’s no connection to the idea of tiff being a little coral, no.

So it’s just the two tiffins. One is the metal tin that holds the lunch, and there’s the tiffin that is the lunch itself, or the small light meal itself. And this goes back at least 200 years.

Now I have a word for those lunches I throw together. Carrot sticks and spaghetti.

Oh, we call them American tapas in my house.

Oh, that’s nice. I like that.

American tapas.

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