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Does the word "supper" sound old fashioned to you? It does to me. I always call the evening meal "dinner".

Depends on context. In Upper Midwestern English? Yes. In UK or Southern American English? No.

My grandparents call the evening meal "supper" and the afternoon meal (what most people call "lunch") "dinner." For me "supper" and "dinner" are interchangeable, except that I'd never call a formal function a "supper" and probably 85% of the time I'd just use "dinner"--but "supper" doesn't sound that antiquated to me.

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"But if of ships I now should sing, what ship would come to me,
What ship would bear me ever back across so wide a Sea?”

To me, supper and dinner are interchangeable, but I normally these days use dinner; when I was younger I did use supper, probably because my dad also uses it, but at some point I switched to using dinner consistently, probably because I perceived supper as old-fashioned.

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Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

I use the two semi-interchangeably (except when discussing a formal evening meal, which is always a dinner, or the middle-of-the-day Sunday meal, which can be dinner but is never supper), but I've also been gently teased for using "supper", so I recognize that other people in this area can view it as old-fashioned. Nevertheless, I think I mostly use "supper".

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I generally forget to say, so if it's relevant and I don't mention it--I'm from Southern Michigan and speak Inland North American English. Yes, I have the Northern Cities Vowel Shift; no, I don't have the cot-caught merger; and it is called pop.

In middle English "dinner" meant "breakfast". The meal at the beginning of the day was considered the main meal. "Supper" was a light meal in the evening close to bed.

"Supper" is markedly English for me i.e. it's a word I'm aware of existing in the English language, but I'm not at all used to hearing in real life. I'm much more used to both 'dinner' and 'tea'.

For me, "tea" is a drink, not a meal.

Personally tea is a beverage, but I am familiar with English-speakers using it to refer to a light afternoon meal. (Apparently some English-speakers use it to refer to an evening meal, but I am not familiar with this usage.)

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Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

I have "tea" as both the drink and the main evening meal. A light afternoon meal is "afternoon tea", but that's a pretty old-fashioned concept for me and evokes images near-exclusively of tea and jam scones.

I don't know if tea on its own refers to a light meal anywhere. I have both morning tea and afternoon tea which do (neither of which are old-fashioned), but tea on its own only refers to the main evening meal i.e. is interchangeable with dinner. Supper normally refers to a light late night meal, like having a hot chocolate and biscuit (cookie) before bed. Using it for dinner is a bit old-fashioned.

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If you cannot change your mind, are you sure you have one?

Here's a thread on Oscan.

Wait, wait, wait. You guys across the Pond call your evening meal "tea"?

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"But if of ships I now should sing, what ship would come to me,
What ship would bear me ever back across so wide a Sea?”

I learned this from watching the movie Beautiful Thing. One of the characters catches it for having "burned the tea" and I was initially like How the hell do you do that?

Hyacinth Bucket is the one who taught me that "supper" sounds posh to most people over there.

For me, tea often is a meal, even if that's not really the intention. There was a point when I was in 5th or 6th grade or something that I'd come home from school to drink tea and eat cassava with a very spicy and saucy fish dish (a "quintessentially Malayalee" dish, as my dad once put it, usually made with mackerel in this case IIRC, but probably made a lot more often with sardines in India itself).

When it can't claim to be 'dinner', yes. 'Dindins' is a generic call to a meal.

In my family, we only ever said "dinner", but lots of other Australians say "tea". I remember visiting a friend who's mum was my mum's friend in the afternoon when I was about 5 or 6 and my friend's mum asked if I wanted to stay for tea. I said I don't drink tea and both our mums laughed at me for being cute but I still just didn't understand.

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Glossing Abbreviations: COMP = comparative, C = complementiser, ACS / ICS = accessible / inaccessible, GDV = gerundive, SPEC / NSPC = specific / non-specific
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MY MUSIC

The calling an evening meal "tea" is a stereotypically Northern English thing; indeed the stereotype is "breakfast, lunch, dinner" vs. "breakfast, dinner, tea". "supper" is also found, but I think it's definitely more of a southern thing, and particularly more middle to upper class southern thing (it's the norm in Cambridge for example).

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First known on here as Karero