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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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dinner
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A word which is rivalled only by *tea in its potential for social confusion, describing two quite different meals depending on class and to a certain extent on region. Throughout most of the 20C it has meant a midday meal in working-class families, and that remains to a large extent the case in northern England. During the same period it has been an evening meal for the professional classes. It is the manual workers who have been consistent, for it was always the custom to dine in the middle of the day (a lighter evening meal being supper). But during the 18–19C the well-to-do steadily postponed their main meal. *Pepys, in the late 17C, dined at noon; a century later Parson *Woodforde sat down at 3.00; and by the late 19C the time for dinner was 7.00. It has shifted less rapidly since then, being now at about 8.00.
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As the gap between breakfast and dinner extended, the fashionable began to feel the need for something in the interim. The result was luncheon, derived from a word for a lump of bread or meat. In its first known appearance, in 1652, luncheon is clearly just a snack for it is described, splendidly, as 'intermealiary'. By the early 19C it had become established as lunch, a full-scale meal. Such it has remained, fixed for the moment at about 1.00 p.m. In the coming years it will probably drive out entirely the original midday meaning of dinner.
Supper is now used as an alternative term for the evening meal, though still with the implication that it is lighter and less formal than dinner.
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