Lunch versus Dinner versus Supper

Many times I have moved from one house to the next, one town to another, but the transition never included changing the meaning of words. At one point in my life I actually thought dinner (1) and supper (2) could be interchanged when referring to the evening meal; but oh, how tragically wrong I was. I recall the first realization of my mistake like it was yesterday. This led to my discovery of an ancient plot to starve the world and Mrs. Gump's (3) ongoing struggle against her fashionable enemies. My mother had just recently met the man who was to become my stepfather, David. He seemed like an okay guy. We got along well. He let me play with his chainsaw, and in exchange, I taught him how to flatten a tool shed with an oak tree.

One afternoon my stomach began to growl. David and I had spent that morning proving humans' superiority to trees. So, I casually asked if he would like to join me for lunch, (4) but little did I know that this oft-heard question was meaningless to a wise man like David. He stared in confusion, as if to say, "What is this lunch you speak of?" I contemplated his bewildered look, thinking he had not heard my question. I repeated the request and was once again met with a similar expression.

"What?" David said.

"You want to go get a sandwich," I said clarifying the meaning of my previous question.

"Oh, you want to get some dinner," he replied. I then returned one of his confused looks.

This man was at least twenty years my senior, and nobody had ever explained to him that dinner was the meal after lunch? Or was it the other way around? Had I been misled my entire life? Was there a worldwide conspiracy attempting to insert a meaningless word into the English language? Had my own mother ...

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...eved to be a derivative of lunch, occurs in our quotes eleven years earlier, with its present spelling. In sense 2, lunch was an abbreviation of luncheon, first appearing about 1829, when it was regarded either as a vulgarism or as a fashionable affectation.

5. Eddie Bauer and Ralph Lauren are famous fashion designers of the 20th century.

6. Another famous fashion designer of the 20th century.

Works Cited

Crowley, Melanie, and Mike Crowley. "Words for the Wise." Take Our Word For It, 94 (24 July 2000).

Dial, Mark. "Opinions of City and Country Folk." Informal Interviews. 20 October 2001.

"Dinner." Online Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989.

Forrest Gump. Dir. Robert Zemeckis. Perf. Tom Hanks and Sally Field. Paramount. 1994.

"Lunch." Online Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989.

"Supper." Online Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989.