Dinner, supper, lunch: The trilogy

Some of us decided to steer away from the hassle (i.e. fun) of the holidays and stay on campus during the break, enjoying the peaceful (i.e. nothing-to-do) atmosphere and dining at the classy Bon Appétit (i.e. old Café Mac). Yes, I am bitter. But what I am still trying to get over is the fact that we had “Thanksgiving dinner” at noon. I thought dinner was something you have in the evening! I was even more perplexed when I was informed that some people in the South actually use the word dinner instead of lunch and supper. Hmmm. I don’t know about you, but supper reminds me much more of Oliver Twist’s “please sir, can I have some more” (with a cute British accent) than anything Southern American … I did some research on these words and realized that nothing is certain in this world. Here’s the lowdown on the trilogy:

Believe it or not, dinner actually means “breakfast”! It was borrowed into Middle English from Old French disner, now dîner (the noun was derived from the verb disner, which became English’s dine). Disner came from the Late Latin (300 – 700 AD) verb disiunare, “to break one’s fast” or “to eat one’s first meal.” In earlier Latin the verb was disieiunare, where dis = “away” and ieiunium = “fast.” In Middle English, dinner was used for the first big meal of the day, which was eaten sometime between 9 a.m. and noon, so it had the meaning of “breakfast” or “lunch.” Later on, a cultural change caused the upper classes to start having their main meal in the evening – which they called dinner.

But what about supper? I certainly didn’t suspect it was from the same origin as soup. The English supper came from the Old French verb super or souper which meant “to eat the evening meal.” The traditional evening meal of French workers used to be soup – hence the formation of the verb from Old French soupe, “broth.” That word came from Late Latin suppa, “bread soaked in broth,” which has its origins in the Germanic root sup-, e.g. in Old English supan “to drink” and Icelandic súpa, “to sip.” The English words sop and sip are also related to supper. To stretch this even further, they all share the Indo-European root seu- which has to do with anything liquid (think of soap, sewer, suction, soak…).

Lunch is definitely the weirdest one in the trilogy. It seems to have a split personality, since dictionaries disagree on its origins. Some say that lunch, “a slight meal between breakfast and dinner,” is short for luncheon. Luncheon was probably formed from the outdated nuncheon, “light snack,” and the dialectal lunch, “hunk of cheese or bread.” The Middle English noneshench literally means “noon-drink,” since none = “noon” and schenche = “a pouring out of drink” (compare German schenken and Danish skjenke). Others say that it was the other way around, i.e. that luncheon was derived from the original lunch, “hunk of bread” (which is actually the forefather of lump).

So in short, dinner is breakfast, supper is soup, and lunch is a funny combo of a hunk of bread and noon-drink. Bon appétit!